Let's Touch Those Stars
by stAnd out - SHOUT OUT
Summary: Willie Sharp/OC "Adena had known Harry and his crew since she was fifteen; ten years later she is training and travelling with them to an asteroid in space to try and save the world. Terrified, but refusing to give up, she catches the attention of the man with the task of piloting her and her crew to the asteroid, giving them both a reason to return home, together, and safe.
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

**We Live to Drill, We Drill to Live**

Those who worked at the Oil Rig owned by Harry Stamper became a family, brothers and sisters, daughters and fathers—and a mother. Grace wasn't raised by her birth mother, only her father and the unruly men that he worked with. However, there was a mother figure that was always there for her; at least, most of the time. Adena "the General" King, working with Harry for most of her life since she was fifteen and had run away from home, became one of the most valuable assets of the team. A near genius since she was first placed in school, Adena's eidetic memory made her near perfect in any school program she had ever attended. Harry even paid for her way through university, giving her a chance to gain two doctorates and a bachelor before she was twenty three, paying him back when she later received a full-ride scholarship.

Now, running around the rig alongside the other workers, oil flying through the air and covering their world in slick black, she found she wouldn't give it up for the world. Her once white tank-top was permanently ruined with the black liquid along with her pale grey jumpsuit that had been wrapped around her waist when the excitement first began. Running along the catwalks, she rushed over to where Bear was working on closing off the valves, throwing herself onto one that had remained open and beginning to twist it. Having lived and worked on rigs, she was lean with muscle and had a deep tan on her upper body that wasn't covered by her tanks.

"King, get your ass out of there!" Harry was screaming from the level above her and Bear, he and A.J. working to close the valves on their end. Ignoring him and his fatherly nature, she continued to twist until she was sure that the valve was sealed before moving over to where the next one was located. Much larger than the last, it needed two people to turn and Bear was close behind her to offer a hand.

"We struck oil, Baby!" Bear was cheering with a shit eating grin spread across his face, making her laugh heartily while pulling on her side of the wheel, letting Bear lift his and enabling the valve to turn and began to close off.

Black oil was dripping off their hardhats and down their faces, nearly getting in their eyes and mouths. Fighting against the urge to lick her lips, Adena wiped her bare arm across one of her cheeks to remove the tickling feeling of the oil dripping down as she wiped her gloved hands on her ruined jumpsuit bottoms. This was her life and she would never trade it for anything.

"King, what did I tell you?" Harry demanded when they had stopped the overflow of oil, tossing her a rag to wipe her face clear.

"Just because you're all protective of Grace because you found out she was sleeping with A.J., doesn't mean I'm going to let you treat me differently," she retorted. "This is my job, why am I suddenly not allowed to do it?" she asked sarcastically a moment later, wiping around her eyes first before doing the same with her mouth. She wasn't petite; she actually could have passed as Grace's sister if someone saw them at a glance. Both were tall with long dark hair, but while Adena was tan the daughter of her boss was pale and instead of Grace's blue eyes she had sea green ones that could sometimes look blue in certain lights.

Looking at her now, Harry felt that she could have already been off with a husband and starting a family if he hadn't been so weak all of those years before when she was just a fifteen year old runaway that needed some income. She had told him she would do anything if he hired her, and he had piled all of the hard work on her that he could with the hopes of scaring her off and sending her home, but she adjusted herself to the physical labor just as easily as she adapted her mind to her school lessons.

"I'm sorry, Adena," Harry finally sighed as he moved to lean against the raining, watching as the woman wiped at her tongue with a clean part of the rag, making a face at the taste of the oil in her mouth. "What do I do, General?" he asked, playing on a nickname that he had given her when she was younger and had been sent to Bootcamp by Harry as a punishment for her getting into some trouble when she was seventeen. She had come back much more refined, but when Harry placed her in any sort of role that gave her some power she basically became a drill sergeant.

"Let it alone," she answered, leaning against the railing beside him and looking over to where A.J. was getting nursed better by Grace. "I know that you want to be a good father, and you are, Harry, I'm kind of jealous that Grace had you all to herself—but, you need to understand that you're only going to push her away if you try and control every decision she wants to make."

Harry made a face at the scene of his daughter coddling A.J. before he forced himself to look away. "He's not good enough for her. Bad enough I let you get stuck here with us, you could have moved on to a great man and a great life; I'm not about to let Gracie get mixed in with a….roughneck like A.J."

"They've done studies about what woman find attractive in a man," Adena started, making Harry roll his eyes when she went from 'close friend, oil rig worker' to 'university professor' in under a second. "It's been proven that woman look for qualities in a man that remind them of their father; their smell, their voice or maybe, in Grace's case, their profession and attitude."

"Shut up," Harry scolded teasingly, pushing at Adena as she laughed at him and nearly knocked her over in the process.

The sound of another helicopter approaching caused them both to look up, confused. Adena kept a close eye on the books, helping Grace to keep them in check, and they were not supposed to get any more visitors for the day after those who had come earlier before number two broke oil.

"General?" Harry asked a moment later, still watching the approaching machine.

"Military," Adena asked as she leaned back to get a better look. "Wow, Black Hawk, someone means business."

Making their way down toward the landing pad, Adena stopped next to Rockhound, who gave her a look of confusion that was simply answered with a shoulder shrug. She didn't know anything more than the rest of them, but she began to slowly gain more as she watched the uniformed men emerge from the helicopter while Harry moved to greet them. Trying to read their lips was difficult, as they were yelling over the continued run of the helicopter's engine and the spin of the blades. Clearly, they were planning on cutting back out quick if they weren't shutting down completely. The yelling exaggerated their lip movement and made it hard to try and understand what they were saying, but the facial expressions varied from monotone to grim with knowledge.

Harry didn't give much instruction as he was moving toward the helicopter, aside from one very serious order to Chick—remove A.J. from the rig immediately. Grace was taken with Harry, more than likely from Harry's own order. Letting out a sigh, she glanced over to the young man in pity. She had tried her best, but there was no changing Harry's mind until he decided to do so himself. If she tried again it would be as good as speaking to a brick wall.

"Well, this has been eventful," Oscar said dryly as he watched their boss fly away with the United States military. "So, what are you gunna do when we get back on land?" he asked instead, seeing that she was still focused on why they could have been there in the first place.

"Bathe," she answered, looking down at her disgusting clothes and oil drenched skin. "Gunna go back to your Ranch?" she asked in return, getting an excited grin from the blonde that answered her question for her. Patting him on his oil covered chest with a faint smile, Adena pulled her hardhat off as she was walking toward her small room that she was usually shared with Grace, when the woman wasn't with A.J. or course.

Across the world, Harry was standing in a hanger staring up at the fading sunlight in the sky, Truman standing next to him with Grace a couple of feet away. His thoughts were on his team of drillers that were sure to have left the rig already, heading their own separate ways from the rig that was sitting in the China Sea. Thinking back to the men standing in the hanger behind him, he really didn't think that they were going to be able to do shit on that Asteroid. His team, the people that he put his faith and trust in every day, were the only ones he felt could actually do the job that Truman was attempting.

Harry had a rag-tag family of geniuses in their fields, people who would have been refused by anyone else and it was those people that he felt were the ones that he would put the world's hope in. Letting out a sigh, he ducked his head down as he came to his decision. He would let them make the final choice, but if they were willing then he would need them at his side.

"The guys get off this rig, they scatter," Harry explained to Truman as Grace placed their maroon folders on the table, each with a label on the front that had a name printed in black ink. "_J. Otis Curlene_ _Bear, probably the only black man on a big dog in Kadoka, South Dakoda_."

"_Max_."

"You got a weight limit on the shuttle?" Harry asked Truman as he accepted the file, realizing that Max would be one of the optimum choices.

"_You know I want Rockhound_."

"We call him Rockhound because…well, he's horny," Grace explained, looking up from where his file was sitting on the table in front of them. "You might want to start with every Bar in New Orleans."

"_Oscar Choice, spacy but absolutely brilliant geologist. He owns a house ranch outside of El Paso_."

"_Mr. Chick Chapel, at the craps table. Ceasar's Palace, Las Vegas, Nevada_."

"Who's gunna run the other rig?" Grace asked after she took a moment to rest her eyes, turning her back on the files littering the table. "How about Benny, he's good."

"The only one who knows how to run it as well as I do is A.J."

Harry paused when he came to one of the thicker files, staring down at the name. _Adena King._ Glancing over at Grace and flashing her the name on the file, the other woman nodded her agreement before they looked over to Truman and his small band of men that had been taking down the names that were in the final decisions category.

"Women allowed?"

"One of our pilots is a woman," Truman assured.

Tossing the file down on the table so that it slid across to Truman, Harry began to explain. "_Adena King_. We call her the General. Holds a record for being the third smartest person in the world with an IQ of 228 and has two doctorates in engineering and a bachelors in physics. I've seen this woman read a French-English dictionary and fluently speak the language in under an hour."

"You'll probably find her at her friend's gym in New York, called _Knuckle_. She likes to stay in shape for when she gets back on the rig," Grace finished, remembering how Adena had gone through a phase of wanting to be a UFC fighter before she actually punched Rockhound and realized how much it hurt her knuckles to punch a person instead of a heavy bag.

Adena threw her fists at the swaying heavy bag in front of her as ACDC blasted through the gym's speakers. Sweat was covering her entire body from head to toe and her hands were starting to get sore from pounding the leather bag filled with sand, even though her hands were carefully wrapped and encased in padded gloves. The tight braid she had pulled her hair into swung around her smacked against her neck before falling back onto her sweaty back, her sports top leaving most of it exposed.

The music cut out suddenly and broke her concentration as she stilled before she landed her next punch and instead caught the swaying punching bag, the creaking of its chain the only sound in the room for a moment.

"Adena King," an authoritative voice called from behind her, at the entrance to the gym. Turning around, the tanned woman raised an eyebrow as she blinked against the sweat that was running down her face. Three men in FBI jackets stood together, wearing the same grave expression as the men that had picked up Harry and Grace from the rig.

"We'll need you to come with us."

Looking between the three of them, Adena pulled off her gloves and plastered on a large, fake grin as she put her fists on her hips, trying to regulate her breathing.

"Well shit, I just got off work."

Sitting in the back of a large black SUV, Adena mostly watched out the window as they were driving. Sitting in a truck for four hours with three FBI agents staring at her like there was a million dollar prize for the first one to guess her deepest secret, the rig worker was getting ready to deck one of them if they didn't stop it. During the third hour she had begun to doze, but was woken again throughout the fourth hour until they arrived outside of the large glass building behind a lineup of black vehicles.

Unable to stop herself, her jaw dropped in amazement when the sign _NASA _became visible. Leaning over the man to her right, she strained to see who else was in the cars and fought against an excited grin at the sight of Rockhound and Bear closest to her, each getting out of their own black trucks. Pulling up at the back of the line, Adena was helped form the car by the agent she had been invading the personal space of and herded up toward the others.

Below the large white lettering that told what building they were before, Harry and Grace were standing with a team of men she did not recognize. The two Stampers looked amused as the crew greeted one another but the man who appeared to be in charge was biting his lip in a nervous manner.

"Salute for the General!" Bear bellowed when he saw Adena making her way toward them, still dressed in her sweaty gym attire with a jogging jacket thrown over her sports bra. Breaking into a grin, Adena opened her arms with the expectation of getting a hug. Bear enveloped her in his thick arms, lifting her clean off of her feet with a happy scream as she wrapped her arms around his neck the best that she could.

"Reporting for duty, General King," Oscar joined in, throwing an arm over her shoulder as soon as Adena was free from Bear's choking hug. "You stink, they pick you up from the gym?"

"Coming from the one who smells like a blend of hay and horse shit?" she retorted reaching down to pinch his ass teasingly before she moved over to where Harry was waiting for them, giving him a much gentler hug than the one she had received from Bear. "Good to see you haven't been arrested or something. You know, with all of those protestors, I was half expecting you to tell us you'd been sued by Green Peace."

"What's up, Harry!" Bear called from behind her. "Did NASA find oil on Uranus, man?"

Pulling away from the professional driller with a grin on her face, Adena found herself glad to be back with her weird-ass family. "Where's my hug?" Rockhound asked as he approached Adena, pouting at his lack of greeting similar to what the others had received.

"You sold it for a swift kick to the balls after the last time you grabbed my ass," Adena retorted, crossing her arms to remind him that she had muscle and could punch him again even if it hurt. Rockhound whistled at her biceps before he raised his hands in surrender and stepped away.

Grace fell in step next to Adena as they made their way into the building, following after the man that Harry had introduced as Truman. "Thank you for trying to talk to Harry," she began, smiling to the slightly taller of the two. Only an inch above her, Adena took on the role of the older very seriously.

"Might help convince him if you called him dad once in a while; butter him up or whatever," she replied as she tucked her hands into the small pockets on her workout pants.

"Things are about to get very serious, Dee," Grace warned as her smile disappeared. Adena's frown fell back into place, the feeling in her gut already having told her so without Grace reminding her of the fact. The second those men had arrived to take Harry off the rig, her heart had clenched in her chest and it had felt as though her stomach had bottomed out and hit the floor. There was no way anything good could come of them being called to NASA, especially if it was at Harry's final decision. Things were about to get more than just serious. It was about to become their personal, living nightmare.

**I've been watching Armageddon a lot lately, so I wanted to start a story **

**Let me know what you think, I hope I don't ruin the beauty of the story when writing this.**


	2. If You Only Had A Day

**If You Only Had a Day**

Sitting in a room with the men that she had come to call her family, Adena King was numb. She knew that in time she would begin to feel again and probably take some time to break down and cry or scream into a pillow in some attempt to make things better inside of her, but for the moment she was left to stare down at the table top, a glass of water in front of her that she couldn't find it in herself to drink. It had been appealing when she first sat down, but after Harry had begun to explain all of the feeling bled from her body. She was sure that her face must have been pale from the blood rushing from it, she definitely felt sick enough to match the appearance.

Each person sitting at the table had changed from their jovial selves at seeing one another again to the morbid reality that they were the world's best hope at surviving. Even without the pressure that was put on their shoulders at the thought, there was the understanding that their world could very well come to an end within the next seventeen days.

Letting her head fall back against the leather chair she was presently sitting in, Adena let out a long breath as she tried to stop herself form feeling ready to vomit up the lunch she had before she went to the gym that day. Next to her, Noonan patted her leg in comfort even though he looked as ill as she felt.

"None of you have to go," Harry began after he had given them a moment to let the gravity of the situation set in. "We can all just sit here on Earth, wait for this big rock to crash into it, and kill everything and everybody we know."

Lifting her head to look at Harry once more, Adena looked as broken and miserable as she had been when she was a fifteen year old runaway.

"The United States Government just asked us to save the world. Anybody want to say no?" he proposed, giving them that one chance, the opportunity to back out while they still could.

Chick started first, still starting down at the table, "Twenty years. Haven't turned you down once; not about to start now." Looking up to Harry, he didn't appeared enthusiastic in the least, but his words came from the heart as he said, "I'm there."

"Guess I can't let you go up there alone," Noonan seconded, looking from Chick over to Harry.

"I'm with you," Bear joined in, the deep baritone of his voice soothing for Adena's fraying nerves.

Oscar, from where he had been playing with a model of the shuttle, turned to Harry. "I mean, this—this is historic." Turning to the rest of the table and those that had yet to volunteer, he looked more excited than Adena figured that he _should_ be, but then again it was Oscar and he just about never spoke in a negative way. "Guys, this is deep blue hero stuff! Of course, I'm in."

"While I don't share his enthusiasm," Rockhound cut in after a moment, "you know me; beam me up, Scotty." Trying to smile, he instead just looked like he was one more bad word away from throwing up as well.

"You alright, Max?" Harry asked when the larger man had yet to comment.

Speaking into the table, he sounded like the worst out of all of them. "I don't-I-I-I don't…" finally lifting his head, he turned to the head of the table with a broken expression. "Whatever you think."

When Harry turned his attention to her at the other end of the table, Adena still wasn't exactly sure what she was supposed to feel. However, acting on her deep set urge to burst into hysterics didn't seem the best way to go in front of the men she had grown accustomed to, and so she settled on taking a calming breath before answering in the way she knew would hide her deeper feelings. "As the only woman being proposed this, I really don't want to say no and deal with the mocking of being a pussy the rest of my life by you asses." Noonan let out a breathy, huff of a laugh from her right at her wording, nodding his head in understanding. They would have, too. "I've been following your crazy antics all over the world since I was fifteen, Harry. Guess it was only a matter of time before those antics took us to _beyond_ the world."

Harry smiled at her, remembering all of those times that he had said they were going to a new rig, to another impossible dig, and she had been the first to hop on for the ride. As the last at the table, he looked to A.J.

"What about you?"

"I'm in," the younger man said without a moment of hesitation.

Nodding his head, the good news of having a full team never showing on his face, Harry looked over them all one more time. "Alright, then. We go."

Before there could be any dispersal or news of what happens next, Rockhound spoke up. "I don't want to be the materialistic weasel of this group, but do you think we'll get hazard pay out of this?" Raising an eyebrow at him, Adena rose from her seat quietly and left the room without another world. Grace didn't wait for her father's instruction as she took off after her, knowing that the older woman was heading for the women's bathroom to lock herself in a stall and fall apart.

"Wait, Dee," Grace called calmly as they reached the end of the hall, catching her arm to draw her to a stop. "It's alright," she tried to assure. "You don't have to go; it's alright to be afraid-"

"I'm not," Adena said after a moment. "I can't feel anything right now, but I know that I'm supposed to be terrified. I just volunteered to jump in a rocket, head out to space and drill a hole in an asteroid. Why am I not bawling my eyes out and crying for someone to just hug me, and tell me everything will be alright?"

"When have you ever cried, Adena?" Grace asked in response, getting a sloppy laugh from the other as she rubbed her arm soothingly. "Remember when you broke you collarbone when you were twenty and Noonan kept poking it to try and be sure that it was broken? You didn't even cry, and I always looked up to you for that. You were always the one that was so level headed and calm, I wished that I could be like you."

"I haven't cried since before I left home," Adena admitted, looking at the floor. "I didn't cry when I ran away from the only blood family that I had. What does that make me?"

"Strong. Independent. You're the General, Adena, a soldier by blood. It's just who you are, and no matter what you face you will do so with the same strength you always have."

Grace stepped into Adena's space immediately when she saw the other woman squeeze her eyes closed in grief, wrapping her in an embrace that she hoped would offer some warmth and assurance. Adena had always been there when she needed her, even when she had started seeing A.J. Ff course, as Adena had a horrible ability to lie, she had left names out of the equation but her advice had been helpful all the same.

"I need you to look after our idiots while you're up there," Grace added on a moment later and making Adena huff a laugh that sounded somewhat like a dry sob.

The men all looked over when the two stepped back into the room, dry eyed and calm. They had just passed Harry the sheets with their requests on them and were getting ready to head out to see Truman. "If you want anything really hard to get, now's the time to ask for it," Oscar whispered loudly as he stood from his seat.

"Is it too much to ask that we all survive this?" she blurted out, sobering the mood in the room immediately. Shaking her head at Harry, he took that as her answer to Oscar's proposal and turned to head out and find where Truman could be.

"Come here, baby girl," Bear invited, opening his arms to her. Adena let out a sad laugh as she stepped up against his side, leaning into his strong frame. As sturdy as she could be most of the time on her own, there was always going to be those moments when she needed her family to lean on. Bear had always been there for her, and she knew that she could trust the large, soft hearted man more than most in her life. Even more than Harry, depending on the topic.

Leaving the room with the others, Adena stood with the men as she watched Harry speaking with Truman and a very disapproving man that she recognized to be General Kimsey standing with him. He looked extremely displeased and it only appeared to worsen as Harry spoke, especially when it came to the fact that the guys had decided that they never wanted to pay taxes ever again and had unanimously voted that they would say she wanted the same as well.

"How did you manage to get _that_ many tickets?" Adena asked Oscar as they were walking away from their perch above the main entrance. "Honestly, fifty-six?"

"What, you have a car, where do you park?"

"Parking spaces, usually. Legal ones," she answered, getting a snicker from Noonan behind them. "So, what now? I mean, we're going into space so I'm going to assume the regular tests for an astronaut, but we're not doing any moon bouncing."

"Well, I know there's going to be a psych evaluation," Rockhound threw in, looking exasperated at the very thought of it.

"And where there's a psych then there's gunna be a health and physical," she agreed, stepping into the elevator that they were going to take and crossing her arms in displeasure. She knew that she was healthy and she was okay with the shots that she knew they were going to get, but there was just something about it being required that made her feel like it was a test in school she just was too lazy to study for.

"_You'll_ be fine, they'll never pass me," Max commented as he and Bear crammed into the same elevator as Adena and Rockhound. As the only woman in the elevator, she felt incredibly short and tiny, especially when Bear and Max were two out of three of the men, while Rockhound gave her a rather perverted leer that made her glare at him until he was hiding behind Bear.

"They're called love handles for a reason, sweetie," she assured, patting Max's stomach.

He rubbed the largeness of his belly as he looked down at it. "My love handles have love handles, and those love handles have hookers and fuck buddies," he retorted, getting a roaring laugh from Adena that she forced herself to stop when the elevator doors opened to allow them to meet up with Truman and Harry.

"We're really pressed for time and we need as much as we can to go toward your training, so your physical exam has already been scheduled and your psych evaluation will be this the day after the physical," Truman began explaining after the entire team had gathered around him. "Things around here are gunna be done fast but efficiently. We need to focus on getting you all trained for the actual mission, so consider the next several days easy."

Laid out on a cot in the very white room the following day, Adena was scowling at the size of the needle that was meant to be administered into her body and found herself scoffing at Truman's words. "Easy, my ass." She was answered by the doctor _stabbing_ her in the butt cheek with that same needle, earning a faint shriek that had the men outside of her room laughing at wheat they heard.

"Try not to tense up," the doctor warned, his hand cold against her ass as he injected her with the disgusting yellow substance.

"So sorry," she gritted out sarcastically, glaring at the door across from her as she was lying on her stomach, leaving her butt accessible for the doctor after he had opened the back of her paper hospital gown. When he finally finished and had wiped the puncture with a disinfectant, he put a Band-Aid holding down a cotton ball over the small bleed and allowed her to leave.

Liming her way out of the room, she made a very uncomfortable face as the rest of the guys met her with laughs and taunts. Glaring at them each in turn, she refused to sit down and instead steadied herself by leaning on the wall. She could feel the substance she had been injected with bleeding through her bloodstream and it made her rather queasy at the thought.

It made her feel better, however, to see that Noonan was also suffering after he had gotten the 'anal treatment' and was groaning in pain with a very uncomfortable look on his face. Max seemed a bit too energetic for someone with a tube rammed up his butt, but she wasn't about to start judging. The bag for Noonan was nearly empty, while Max's was still full and that was all the answer she needed.

"Miss King, please come and take a seat. We're going to take some blood and measure your blood-pressure now," another doctor said from the room where A.J. and Bear were being informed of their health. Glaring at the man for a moment, she moved over to the bed, making sure to hold the back of her gown closed, and sat down on her left butt cheek only as she offered up her right arm for him to take her blood pressure.

Her mood greatly increased, however, when Bear decided he was going to make more of a show when he was told of his cholesterol and rose up on his cot and ripped off the thin hospital gown to reveal he was wearing on a leopard printed speedo beneath. Thankfully they weren't testing her blood pressure anymore because she was nearly hyperventilating from the laughter that Bear induced. The looks on the faces of the specialists were making her laugh all the more. The rest of the guys just cheered him on like they were watching a striptease.

"Miss King!" a woman called as she stepped into the room, nearly immediately silencing the woman's laughter when she saw the long metal Enama probe that the woman was holding. "You're next." Chick slowly struggled in past her, hunched over from the state that he was in after his probe exam.

"Come on, my ass is already sore," Adena tried to argue, motioning toward herself to point out the way she was avoiding sitting on one side of her butt because of the injection she had just undergone. When Helga, the dark skinned nurse with a frightening smile, just shrugged her shoulders and motioned her to follow as Adena looked to Harry for assistance. He was wisely looking the other way and avoiding eye contact.

Glaring at him, she slid off the cot and once more pulled the back of her robe closed tightly.

"Fuck me," she cussed to herself, limping to the door.

"Oh, she will," Chick warned, still leaning slightly awkwardly to the side with a red face of embarrassment and pain.

"I'll think she might actually enjoy it," Oscar said when she was gone, looking over to Max. "Didn't she tell us once she'd had anal sex before?"

"How would you know that?" Max asked as he paused with reading his own chart. "I never heard a thing about her sex life, how the hell do you know about it?"

"Can you not talk about that while I'm right here, please?" Harry interrupted before there was a chance that Oscar could continue. He didn't want to think about anything intimate occurring between Adena and another man, let alone what those intimate things may include. "That's as bad as finding Grace in bed with A.J." The mentioned man glanced up from where he was getting his blood pressure taken, going slightly pale at the thought that Harry might go at him with a scalpel if they didn't change the conversation.

When Adena struggled back into the room, her face was flushed in discomfort. Her back was ramrod straight in comparison to how the guys had all hunched forward and she was walking incredibly stiffly, hooked up to the same red bag that the rest of them had been. When she saw the grin on Freddie's face she pointed at him threateningly with a promise of pain in her eyes even before she spoke.

"Say anything and I will kick you in the nuts so hard you'll be singing soprano, got it?" she snapped, her free hand reaching back to close her robe completely again when Oscar leaned around her to try and take a look. "You, too, blondie."

"Not so bad, right?" Max tried to joke, knowing that one of the guys were liable to challenge her anyway and she _would_ kick them in the jewels.

"I prefer anal sex," she sneered back, clearly having heard the conversation while she was leaving. Oscar flushed and had the decency to look abashed while Max appeared to actually be considering whether or not she was being serious. Meanwhile, Harry was rubbing at his face as he tried to forget that he had ever heard the conversation.

**I always thought that the physical exam scene was totally hilarious so of course I had to include it in the story :P**


	3. Brawn and Intellect

**Brawn and Intellect**

Sitting in the room that they were doing the psychological evaluations in, Adena found her mind only focused on one thing. Were the spikes coming from the walls plastic, or foam? She blatantly ignored the psychologist for majority of the time, only ever replying in short answers when he actually asked her a question. She only really began to actively participate when she noticed the displeased look on his face. It was in that moment her mind reminded her that she had never failed a test before and a psych test would not be her first.

"I have a doctorate in Psychology, graduated highest in my entire graduating year. Believe me when I say there is not a question you have not asked me or will ask me that I do not know the textbook answer to. I could mentally warp your mind until you fully believe you need a therapist and believe me when I say that you are making it very tempting."

"Are you becoming defensive, Miss King?"

"Yes, do you want to know why? The planet's about to be destroyed and we were called in here to help you and yet here we are being questioned on our sanity? Are we crazy? Of course we are," she began, leaning toward him and giving him a look that actually made the man lean away from her in unease. "Who else would voluntarily go on a mission into space, carrying a nuclear warhead, and land on the very asteroid that is hurtling toward Earth with a finale of total destruction? We'd have to be crazy to do this, and we'd have to be assholes not to. Don't try to psychoanalyse me, boy, because I've got more knowledge packed inside my brain than you have in every notebook NASA owns."

"So you think yourself a genius? Better than NASA?"

"If you were to look up genius in the dictionary, you would find that it means either someone with an exceptional natural capacity of intellect, which I have as I was born with an eidetic memory, or it could be a person having an exceptionally high intelligence rating on a psychological test, as an IQ above 140. Mine is 228, what's yours?"

"We're not here to talk about me."

"Then why are you here in the first place? I can psychoanalyse _myself_ and I'd do a better job," Adena scoffed. "I've been reading your notes. You have terrible writing, by the way. It's like you're writing in Portuguese. Oh, wait, you are. I know Portuguese, by the way."

After the evaluations when Harry was meeting up with the leading psychologist and Truman, he stood in the slightly darkened room looking at the doctor in wait. "Fail. Fail. Impressively fail. The only one to pass the exam was Miss King and that was mostly because she knew more about psychology than her examiner and she deflected his methods with more refined ones."

"And that's a bad thing?"

"When you need to be tested, yes," the doctor answered shortly in a biting tone. "A toxicology analysis on one of your men revealed Ketamine. That is a very powerful sedative."

"Sedatives are used all the time, Doctor," Harry tried to defend, having a very good idea of who was the one using the sedative.

"Well, this one's used on horses," the small man snapped back.

"Some of these guys are pretty big."

Turning to speak to General Kimsey instead, the doctor continued. "It would normally take 18 months to psychologically prepare, pre-screen viable subjects for space travel. We have seen evidence of a wide variety of territorial aggression-"

"Can they physically survive the trip? That's all I need to know here, okay?" Truman interrupted with a glare in place, meeting the doctor eye to eye.

"Personally, aside from the _possibility_ of Miss King, I don't know how they survived the tests." However, even though he clearly did not want to, each of their files were stamped with a 'NASA APPROVED' seal over the 'FAILED' that had previously been there.

Next came the actual training.

Waiting in the hanger packed with jets, Truman was standing with the men and woman that were going to be their pilots on the trip, leading them there and home. Colonel Sharp was leading the training for the most part, standing next to Truman as they waited. They had been told briefly of the team, but for the most part the Air Force pilots had never seen or heard of the men, and woman, that were going to be taking the fate of the world in their hands.

"Don't judge too soon, Colonel," Truman encouraged as he watched the newest assets to NASA turn the corner from the main building. Harry was walking in the lead with Adena, who had decided to forgo complete professionalism and had copied Bear's choice by wrapping the top of her suit around her waist and leaving her torso in only the tight black undershirt that she had been provided. This, however, revealed just how physically prepared she was as her arm muscles were defined and her faint abs left an outline in the tight material across her stomach.

"Talk about the wrong stuff," Sharp said without hesitation, hearing Truman's warning but unable to stop himself as he looked over the rag-tag family.

"They might surprise you," Truman mumbled as the group approached. "Take a seat and let the lessons begin," he called over them, motioning to the two long metal tables that had been set up for them. Adena immediately plucked up one of the binders sitting on top and opened it, beginning to read. Her mind was able to process over three thousand words per minute, letting her appear to be skimming through the pages inside when she was actually memorising every word she looked at.

"The General's in her territory," Freddie joked when she began to flip through the binder, reading each page faster than one of them could even read a sentence. Truman grinned at Sharp's surprised look as the woman settled into one of the uncomfortable chairs with the binder in her lap, already ten pages through before the rest of the crew had taken their seats.

"You're gunna strain your neck," Harry interrupted, picking up the binder and placing it on the table. "Like a normal person, General."

She didn't answer but instead continued to read, flipping another page, and another and another, until she was halfway through the book by the time Truman gave Sharp the go ahead to begin the lesson.

"Good morning, I'm Colonel Willie Sharp," he introduced first as he stood in front of his own table with several different things spread out on the surface. "In addition to flying one of the X-71 teams to that rock, my job is to train you for the mental and physical rigors of working in space, so you don't freak out on the asteroid." As he said this, Adena finally looked up from her binder and met his eyes. He had been staring at her as he finished, intending to stop speaking and stare her down until she realized she needed to listen. However, he could see it in her sea green eyes that she knew exactly what he was going to do, telling him that she had likely been through it before. The intellect in her eyes surprised him and gave him the briefest spark of hope that not all was lost on this roughneck team.

Blinking at him, Adena seemed to be waiting for him to continue.

"United States astronauts train for years. You have twelve days." Looking over each man sitting at the table, he found himself searching for a hope that they brought even only a quarter of what he could see Miss King offering. "Do you have any intelligent questions before we get started?"

The men looked to Adena as she resumed her page flipping, but Chick was the only one to raise his hand, and wisely didn't speak until Sharp gave a nod. "What's an X-71?"

Taking a quick field trip after the remainder of Sharp's lecture, Adena followed casually as she mulls over what she had just read. By the end of the lecture from the Air Force pilot, she had completely finished the binder of notes and was bouncing her knee energetically as her mind buzzed with the new information and the urge to learn more. Freddie eventually smacked her leg when it became too distracting and she had already been ignoring the glances from Sharp when he noticed her movement beneath the table.

Walking near the back of the pack, it didn't block her view when they entered the hanger that was housing one of the rockets that they would be taking up to the Asteroid. _X-71 _was painted across the top nose of it, but it was introduced to them as one of two ships, _Freedom_ or _Independence_.

"Her titanium alloy impenetrable skin covers the toughest, meanest, most sophisticated space vehicle man has ever made," Truman was explaining, letting the crew marvel over the sight of it. Adena wouldn't help but to smile as she looked over each detail that was visible to the naked eye. "Okay, Air Force Colonel Davis, NASA pilot Tucker will command the shuttle _Independence. _Air Force Colonel Sharp, NASA pilot Watts, shuttle _Freedom._" Truman continued, motioning to each person in turn. "Munitions Specialists Gruber and Halsey will supervise the Nuclear Ordinance."

Standing facing each other, the two teams seemed more to have a battle of testosterone than any kind of agreement to work together.

"Anyway, I just though guys should meet."

Adena looked across at the men she was going to be working with before letting out a sigh and stepping forward, moving directly to Watts.

"Agreement to beat the testosterone levels down with physical force if necessary?" Adena asked as she held out her hand for the other woman to shake. Watts gave a smirk as she reached forward to clasp the taller woman's hand in hers and shook.

"Agreed."

Truman couldn't help but smile in slight amusement that the two women had already begun to gang up on the men. "Jennifer Watts, NASA pilot," he repeated, before motioning to Adena. "Adena King, distinguished double-doctorate graduate with a 228 IQ. Recorded the third smartest person on the planet."

Adena couldn't fight her smirk when she saw Watt's eyebrow twitch just slightly as she fought to keep a neutral face at the thought of the other woman being one of the smartest people in the world.

"We just call her the General," Harry threw in, almost as though reminding Adena they were there. Turning her back on the pilots, she resumed her place among her family as Grace smiled at her when she saw the pride the woman walked with. Adena didn't usually get the chance, or take the chance for that matter, to brag about her intelligence. However, as the people at NASA did nothing but look down on them she was beginning to get aggressive—as passively as possible.

"Where to next?"

Entering the second hanger of the day, this time they were introduced to what Truman called the 'Armadillo'. Each of the group glanced at each other, knowing that before that thing went anywhere near a drill sight they were going to have to nearly tear it apart. "It's going to be retrofitted with your drilling arm," Quincy explained, "She'll turn 800 turbo horses in near-zero gravity."

"Mind if we take a look at her now?" Harry asked from where he had crouched to see the underside of the machine. Adena leaned toward Quincy as Truman gave the go-ahead.

"This is about to break your heart," she warned, before Harry motioned her up and she easily leapt onto one of the wheels to get high enough to start picking around at the exterior skeleton.

"All these rubber hoses gotta go, Max. Count 'em up," Harry ordered. "I want an entire measured layout of this thing, General. You tell me the terrain she can handle."

"Yes, Sir," Adena answered sarcastically from where she was crouching on top of the glass dome window, turning from the front to the back as she made a mental map of the size and maneuverability that the Armadillo would have in any terrain.

"Make sure those hoses are short-throw shifters!" Freddie called as he continued to gut the inside of the monster of a machine. Quincy watched from the sidelines as they gutted the machine, throwing things in all which directions as they found them and decided that they needed to be replaced or could not be used at all. Adena had warned him and felt pity for the man when she saw his troubled look as Harry careless threw item after item from the Armadillo. When he pulled out something that he deemed a plastic ice-cream scoop, Adena outright laughed and leapt down to where Bear was ready to catch her, joining Max on the underside to check out what else she was dealing with.

"Having fun yet?" she asked Max, grinning when she saw that he was very much enjoying himself as he continued to tear each and every hose from the Armadillo that he could find. It was high enough that Adena could move around below it as she continued to take in the factors of the tire sizes, rotation, weight and every other component that would be needed should they at any time need to get the Armadillo out of a tight spot.

Hours later, they had fully gutted all that needed to be removed and they were expecting their new, proper, parts to make their way in gradually throughout the span of two days. During that time, they would alternate between physical and mental preparations. They were expected to do underwater simulations, testing that included endurance with the use of supressed oxygen and what Adena was looking forward to was testing up in the air that meant they were going up into fighter jets and getting thrown around at top speed.

After spending an entire day with only the men as they tore apart the Armadillo, Adena was able to get permission from Truman to run the base, or around it at least, to get some exercise. Letting her know where to stay clear and when it would be best to return by, she was soon off on her own as the guys scattered to their rooms or various places to have time to themselves.

Adena realized that she hadn't been running as often as she should after she got winded from the first lap but refused to stop jogging until she had completed her second. The run had brought her in front of the hanger that housed the X-71 and she brought the image of it back to her mind, thinking about what it might be like to actually sit in one.

"So, 228 IQ?"

The familiar voice drew her attention back, spotting Willie Sharp approaching from the other side of the yard where they had the Air Force jets stored for training. She fought against both the urge to smile at the sight of him and the chance to stare at him when not dressed fully in his uniform, as he had the top zipped open and revealed his crisp white shirt beneath. She'd forced herself to ignore it earlier when she was sitting in his little lecture, but now they were out on their own time she it was hard not to take in that he was a rather attractive man and she did not see any rings on his hands.

Meeting bright blue eyes, Adena realized how heartbreakingly long it had been since she had been with a man, intimate or otherwise.

"Yea, Colonel, why so surprised?"

"Not really the IQ, but more your choice of occupation. Truman said that you've been offered other, better paying jobs before. Yet, here you are with a bunch of oil drillers."

Nodding her understanding, Adena began walking once more, not liking that she was supposed to be on a jog and had already been caught just standing there staring at a building. "I've known Harry since I was fifteen. He took me in, gave me a job—admittedly, it was at first an attempt to scare me into going home, but I fell in love there. Not with a guy, mind you, but the life."

"The life? Constantly smelling like oil, having people undermine you every day because you're a labour worker?"

"_I_ know I'm smart, isn't that enough?" she returned, raising an eyebrow at the pilot. "Do you have to have people praise you on a daily basis to know you're a good pilot. You must be better than good, really, if they've asked you to man the shuttle to save the world." Shifting her long braid of hair, Adena turned to face the Colonel. "Those men in there, they're my family. The fathers and brothers I never thought that I would have. I don't care about money, because no matter where I went I would never be treated better than I have been on the rigs I worked on with Harry and his team. Judge me all you want Colonel, but I'd rather have my weird, dysfunctional, embarrassing family over money, or popularity any day."

Sharp couldn't find the words to express what he thought and instead remained silent as she turned and walked away from him, beginning to jog when she got a certain distance away and turned around the corner of the furthest hanger. She was something unexpected, and he found that he wanting to learn what else could be a surprise about her.


	4. A Kiss For Comfort

**A Kiss for Comfort**

Woken up bright and early, the Stamper Oil workers found themselves running on a long line of treadmills with their heart rate and breathing monitored. Adena found it most irritating to have to jog with a tube stuck in her mouth, restricting her movement unless she wanted to pull on the tube and in turn her lips and cheeks from where the plastic was anchored against her teeth. It was a lot like a breathing regulator used for scuba divers, but it made it harder to breathe instead of easier. The man standing in front of her treadmill was watching her readings carefully, wearing a slightly more pleased look than the others and she had to fight not to smile around the tube. They were taped to their mouths, and their noses were taped shut as well, to allow the EKG machine to get a full reading.

"Accelerate!" the Chief Medical Examiner called through the room and the medical scientists increased the speed on the treadmill, forcing them to work harder to keep up with the speed and keep their breathing regulated enough that they didn't choke through the breathing tube. She could hear when Max started to struggle the most, but he kept going and refused to give up first when everyone else was still going. Glancing at Harry next to her, she was pleased to see that he didn't seem to be having any difficulty.

"Alright, come on, let's go," one of the overseers encouraged, watching them all jog in sync. The man in front of Adena gave her a smile and nod before he stepped away, her readings for the previous speed already recorded. She found herself wishing for some music to listen to because she was starting to get bored with nothing but her mind to keep her occupied.

And so that is how she found herself reciting the periodic table of elements over in her head, singing that song she had once heard someone write that held each of the elements in order. When that was finished, she began to name all of the constellations as she pictured what they looked like and where they would be located at that present moment. When the man came back again to check her readings, she was humming the national anthem and Harry was trying not to laugh from beside her since he knew exactly what was going on.

By the time her newer readings were down and he was leaving, she had moved on from the national anthem to the song 'God Bless the USA' and Harry had calmed down so that he didn't choke on his breathing tube. However, it seemed that she had started something because Oscar started to hum along next to her and soon most of the men were humming _God Bless the USA_ and were getting an exasperated look from the Chief Medical Examiner before he ordered them to cease and focus on their training.

When they were finally finished and had the pads removed from their chest and the tube from their mouth they were all itching to get a deep drink of water and somewhere to sit. As fit as Adena was, her legs felt like they had turned to pudding and she nearly fell into Oscar when she got off her treadmill. She wasn't the only one, however, as A.J. had to hold onto the railings behind him to steady his own shaking legs.

"We're not finished, but you can have a couple of minutes to go use the washroom and get something to drink," the Chief said as he looked over to tired, sweaty group of individuals.

"Woo," Adena cheered dully with sarcasm in her breathless tone that caused Freddie to nod along. Pushing herself away from where she was sitting on the end of her treadmill, she made her way to the woman's washroom and relieved herself before trying to make herself somewhat presentable, washing the sweat from her face before trying to do the same with her neck using some wet paper towel. She knew that it was such an insecure thing to do, but she didn't want to go about walking amongst the NASA scientists reeking of sweat when she knew she already smelled like oil from having been working on the Armadillo the day before. Even after a shower, the smell of grease and metal still clung to her.

Leaving the room and moving to the small sitting area off of the exam room, she met up with Oscar as he gave her a water bottle that was cold and dripping with condensation. Knowing it was stupid to do in a room full of men, she stuck the cold water bottle down her cleavage and sighed at the relief of the heat on her chest. Oscar swallowing thickly from next to her as he watched the movement before he looked away to see where Harry was.

The father figure to the tanned woman was talking with Truman on the other side of the room and had yet to notice the sexually appealing display that his figurative daughter was making. Thankfully, Adena pulled the bottle out after a minute in order to take a drink of it, leaving a wet section on her chest and shirt from where it had been stuck down her shirt, mingling with the sweat that had already been there.

"That was…"

"Shut up," she warned, pointing at him as she took another drink from the bottle. After replacing the cap she put the cold bottle on the back of her neck, her hair already pulled up in a slowly loosening bun. Her dark, chocolate curls were sticking to her face and neck in sections, her cheeks reddened slightly from the run. Oscar wisely turned away in favor of getting a snack before they resumed their testing.

"You're doing inappropriate things again, baby girl," Bear warned with an amused smile from where he had been sitting a couple of feet away. Adena knew that she was probably being inappropriate, but she couldn't help it that she was so uncomfortable from the heat and the sweat on her skin.

"I'm hot," she retorted dryly, pointing at him as well when he opened his mouth to most assuredly say 'that you are' or something of that nature. "What time is it, anyway? How long were we running?" Looking around the room for a clock, as NASA had them everywhere, Adena spotted where there was a table of snacks and made a bee-line for that instead of waiting for an answer. Bear's baritone laugh followed her over, but she didn't care and instead snatched a granola bar and another bottle of water.

Halfway through the chocolate and oats bar, the Chief whistled loudly through the room. "Break's over," he said shortly, motioning for them to head down a new hallway. "We'll be checking how your bodies can handle pressure next. No more running. However, you're gunna need to change into these hospital gowns." Motioning to the table next to the door, there were indeed light blue paper gowns sitting on the surface.

"Come on, not this again," Rockhound groaned, probably remembering a sore ass from the last time they had been asked to change into those irritating paper gowns with the open back. Swallowing down the rest of her granola, she dropped the other bottle back on the table and rather violently snatched a robe from the table that caused Harry to snicker at her.

Why did she have to be the only woman in this group?

After another three hours of grueling tests by the Chief Medical Examiner, they were free to return to their work on the Armadillo. Some engineers provided by NASA had already begun to replace the parts that had to be removed with the proper pieces that could actually be used in while drilling. Harry immediately took control of the situation and began ordering the Engineers to do everything that he wanted them to do and nothing more. The rest of his crew fell in step behind him, knowing their own parts that needed to be played.

"Truman!" Adena called as soon as he stepped into the hanger with Sharp and the other pilots right behind him. They were scheduled to go up in the jets the next day and they were finishing on selecting who was going to be going up with whom. "Those Armadillo's come with a manual?"

"I thought Max and A.J. were driving them?" he asked in return.

"They are, but they are also technologically retarded with anything more advanced than a pipe and a valve. I need to rewrite them a new instruction manual, short and to the point, that they can memorize in the next three days before starting real training with the 'Dillos," she explained calmly, looking back to where they two men in question were working on some of the welding for the drilling arm that was going on the next day.

Nodding in understanding, Truman called Quincy over. "Take Miss King to somewhere quiet; give her the manual for the Armadillos and whatever else she may need." Nodding his head, the other genius motioned for her to follow him from the hanger. "Adena!" he called after they were a couple of yards away, drawing those green eyes back to him. "Try not to burn the manual!"

Grinning a shit eating grin, the woman made a so-so motion with her hand, almost as if to say there was a 50/50 change of her burning the book that Quincy was going to retrieve for her. Watts couldn't help but to give a huff of a laugh at the woman's antics, watching as she disappeared around the corner of the hanger, heading for the main building. While the men were doing the physical labour that would finish most of the work with the Armadillo, Adena was meant to finish the work more on the mental front.

It took a couple of hours and she knew that dinner had already passed as her stomach seemed to want to eat itself, growling loud enough to distract her every now and again, but she was soon working out the last of the typed work for Max and A.J. to run the Armadillos. She used photos that were from the original manual to show what certain components were and knew that if the two men weren't able to drive the Armadillo after all of her work then they were much dumber than she gave them credit for. The original manual had taken her hours to read through, her newer, simpler version was only going to take the men about a night to sort through and more than likely memorize.

One of the men that worked at NASA brought her the finished printouts and Adena checked them through quickly before beginning to put them inside of small binders to give to A.J. and Max. As she was finishing with this the smell of food caught her attention and she looked up to see Harry standing in the doorway with a tray of food from the cafeteria.

"I figured you'd go and forget to eat," he said with a smile, moving to the metal table she was working at to place the tray down. It appeared to be vegetable soup with a sandwich and can of Coca Cola. "All done?"

"Yea, mostly," she answered with a sigh as she looked over to the still open binders. A.J. and Max each had their own, so there were two binders with their names scrawled across the front in permanent marker. "How are things with the 'Dillos?" she asked after a brief pause, falling to sit down in front of the tray as Harry sat next to her, seeming to move more slowly than he usually would.

"It's getting done," he answered simply, watching as she took a bite of her sandwich. "You need to take better care of yourself, Adena."

Grunting in answer as she chewed, the tanned woman leaned back in her seat to look at him properly. "You look like you could use a nap," she began, getting a dry laugh from Harry as he ran his hands down his face, looking incredibly worn down. "You need to trust your men, Harry. Don't have to babysit us all the time."

"Well, you and Grace-"

"Do not even start me on that," Adena interrupted even though she was laughing, causing Harry to smile. He knew that Adena would side with Grace—not A.J., but the other woman who had become her close friend and sister through the years. "Go and get some rest, Harry. The world's not going to end while you sleep, and we promise to come to you if the asteroid picks up speed."

Harry shook his head at her humour but still lifted himself from the chair as she took another bite of her meal. "Smart ass," he muttered, getting a smile that was forced around a mouth full of food. Kissing Adena on the forehead, he left the room a moment later and Adena was once more in the silence of her small little work area. Eating the meal that Harry brought before it went cold, she was soon finishing up the binders as she continued to sip on her Coke.

"Need something stronger?"

Jumping in shock at the sound of someone else having come to see her, Adena turned around to find who else was standing in her doorway. "Colonel," she greeted, surprised to see him of all people coming to see her. In his hand was a black coffee mug that was steaming with the hot liquid. Holding the beverage out to her, Adena hesitated a moment before taking it from him, leaving her Cola on the table behind her. "What brings Mr. Air Force Colonel to my little corner of NASA?" she asked curiously, getting a huff of a laugh from his as he nodded his head.

"I know I haven't been that…kind to you and the other drillers-"

"You've been an ass," she amended, seeing his flinch as she stepped away to put her coffee on the table. "But I can understand why, so believe me when I say that I don't take it personally."

"You'd be the first," Sharp muttered, stepping into the room and looking down at the binders that she had put together. "That…was very quick," he commented, lifting the front cover of the binder to look at the first page. It was a large diagram of the inside of the Armadillo, almost like a drawing of the console, with lines and numbers that, in the following pages, explained what each number was labelling and what that exact component did.

"Thank you," Adena answered with a smile as she almost lovingly sipped from the coffee. "How did you know I liked just cream?" she asked after a moment, looking down at the light brown of the liquid that smelled so welcoming after sitting in that little office for so long.

Sharp dropped the cover closed in the binder again to give her his full attention. "I ran into Harry on the way here; said you could probably use more than just a coke after the day you've had." Smiling to herself, knowing that she should have guessed it had been Harry's doing, Adena nodded her acceptance before motioning for the Colonel to take a seat.

"Will you be one of the pilots taking us up tomorrow?" she asked with the hope of starting a conversation. It might have sounded selfish, but she wanted to keep him there, since she didn't get to spend much time with anyone but her own crew, and it was both a nice relief and a selfish desire because of her little fantasy bubble that included the attractive Colonel.

Taking the seat next to her but shifting so that they were facing one another, Sharp couldn't stop himself from looking down to where she had crossed one leg over the other and in doing so gave the impressing of very long, toned legs. "Yes, I'm either going to be taking you or Harry up. But we have a Vietnam Vet and anything final will be up to him, his name's Chuck and he's going to be in charge."

He stopped for a moment, making the face that Adena knew meant he knew something and was debating on whether or not to tell her. "What is it?" she finally asked, raising an eyebrow in wait.

"There's another surprise for the guys tomorrow, it helps to give them that moment of weightlessness while testing just how strong their stomachs are," Sharp explained, watching as Adena began to grin. "Here at NASA, it's a D-C9 plane called the Vomit Comet."

Adena couldn't help but the laugh at the name, trying to imagine what this thing must have looked like. "What does that do?"

"It's a plane that can climb to forty thousand feet and drop down to ten thousand feet; it gives only about thirty seconds of zero gravity, but it's more to test how they can handle to pressure." Sharp was surprised that she wasn't paling at the thought of what she was to expect the next day. "You seem a bit too excited for this."

"I like fast things," she answered simply as she continued to smile. "When I was fifteen, before I met Harry, I snuck into a theme park because I had no money and spent hours just going from ride to ride, over and over. I've always enjoyed things that went really fast, so I may be looking forward to tomorrow more than just _a bit_ too much."

Sharp smiled back, realizing that this woman would have to have a pretty strong stomach, but he couldn't help but to wonder if that would stand up to the threat of the fighter jets and then the vomit comet. "Maybe I should take you up, won't have to worry about any puke in my plane."

"If you take me up, I _guarantee_ that I won't puke in your plane," she corrected. Her green eyes were dancing with amusement and she was more relaxed than she had been since they arrived, since she hadn't had much time to actually have a moment away from her crew aside from her run the night before. It was strange to spend the last minutes of her night with Sharp for the second time in a row, but she didn't mind in the least as she watched the amusement shine in his eyes to match hers. "Are you nervous about flying the X-71?" she asked after a brief pause, tapping the rim of her empty mug with her nail.

"The _Freedom?_ More intimidated than nervous; it's more than I've ever flown before but I know that I'm prepared to do it. I've been doing simulations as often as I can; not much more that I can do, so knowing that I've done all I can to prepare makes it easier." Watching her nervous tick at tapping on the glass, Sharp leaned forward. "Are you nervous?"

"I am _completely_ terrified," she laughed out, no actual humour in her tone as she glancing up for only a moment before looking at the mug again. "I keep trying to convince myself that everything will be okay, and in two weeks' time things will have gone back to normal. But I've been drilling with Harry nearly ten years—we've almost lost people on rigs on Earth and here we are thinking everything's going to work out perfectly on an Asteroid-"

Sharp took her hand quickly as she began to ramble fearfully, drawing her attention to look him in the eye.

"I don't know how to drill, or how dangerous that asteroid will be, but I have to have faith that your crew are as good as you all have been bragging. Harry's been confident enough to entrust the world to you guys and I'm going to have to hope that that faith stands true."

Swallowing hard, Adena gripped Sharp's hand as she tried to stop the shaking in her limbs. It was just like that first day all over again, when Harry had first explained what was going to happen. Looking into those icy blue eyes, she found something that she had seen in many of the men around NASA, and on her own team as well.

"What else are you fighting for?" she asked timidly, keeping a tight hold on his hand in the hopes that he could be her anchor. "It's personal for you; it's not just about saving the world."

Sharp gripped her hand in both of his, locking them together as he stared down at them. Her skin was deep with a tan from the years of working on the rigs, while his was rather pale from staying in the protective dome of the jets that he had flown over the years. "My two daughters," he answered, squeezing her hands. "My wife and I divorced three years ago; my girls are six and eight now, and they barely even know me anymore."

"You don't get to see them?" Adena asked as her heart tugged at the pain in his voice.

"I have the right to, but when I'm not a work they're with their mom and I only get to see them on weekends anyway. My job was the deciding factor in court when we were fighting for custody. I couldn't be there for them."

Lifting his hands instinctively, Adena pressed a kiss against the knuckles of his right hand, still clasping hers. "You're about to be there for them in the greatest way possible. Not many little girls get to say their daddy saved the world," she assured calmly, looking into his eyes as he gripped her hands in a near vice hold.

"They don't know, no one knows."

"They will," she insisted. "This won't stay quiet. More of the meteors are going to fall and eventually people are going to notice that there's a giant rock hurtling for Earth. NASA can only keep it quiet for so long, and after that it's up to humanity to decide on what it is going to do."

Silence lingered between them after she stopped speaking, the knot of their hands never breaking as they sat in the office with only their breathing to provide a distraction from the quiet. "What about you?" Sharp finally questioned, seeing the pain in her eyes that told him she didn't have people waiting for her out there when she returned to Earth, if they returned.

"The only family I have will be at my side on that Asteroid," she answered meekly. "My parents died when I was seventeen, in a house fire. I ran away when I was fifteen—they didn't even look for me—and it was an aunt that I never even knew I had that tracked me down and told me. They didn't leave me anything, but she thought I should know. I went to their funeral and I had no idea why I was there, standing among these weeping people that I didn't even know. I couldn't cry, even though my parents were dead I could not even force a tear."

"They abused you?" Sharp asked in a strained voice, seeing the answer on her face before he even asked the question. Nodding her head faintly, the tanned woman closed her eyes. "Then they don't deserve your tears."

Looking up with broken green eyes, she offered the best smile that she could in gratitude as she once more lifted his hand and pressed a kiss to his knuckles, giving her thanks for his words.

**Thank you to those who reviewed, I'm glad that you like the story so much **

**I'll have another chapter out as soon as I can, I've just got to edit it but it'll have to wait a bit until I have the time. I hope to hear from my readers again, so please review and let me know what you think **


	5. I'd Wager Fifty

**I'd Wager Fifty**

The oil rig crew were up with the sun the next day, immediately moving in to work on the Armadillo before they had to report to the hanger for flight practice, in which they would be going up in the fighter jets. A.J. and Max had gotten their binder manuals the night before and were each sitting in one of the Armadillos making sure they understood all of the notes that Adena had translated for them. She was there the entire time, working around with the other guys to hook up the drilling arm and would immediately answer any questions that they had. She had specifically asked for the printed pages not to be laminated, as the worker that had been helping her had wanted to do, so that the guys were able to jot whatever notes they needed to add onto the page where they knew it would work best.

Harry stood back and watched as the guys fell into their jobs easily, even Adena, who was helping Bear to weld the braces onto the Armadillo that were going to help support the arm. They had drilled them in, now they needed to both reinforce it and seal it so they didn't need to worry about any oxygen leaks on the inside. The hatch was closed and A.J. was inside getting accustomed to the controls without actually using a working Armadillo, that way when they started training he would already have an idea of what he needed to do.

Glancing away when he heard a whistle of appreciation, he felt annoyance bubble up in his gut when he spotted a couple of the Air Force trainees standing at the entrance of the hanger, watching them work. Usually, this wouldn't bother Harry Stamper, since he had people checking out his rig all of the time. No, this was a problem because they were staring at Adena.

Glancing back at the woman under scrutiny, she was standing on top of the Armadillo, a pair of tinted, protective goggles over her eyes and her hair pulled back to make sure it didn't get singed by the flying sparks from the welding. Bear was standing to the side, keeping the piece in perfect place while she was welding so that there were no complications when it came to installing the actual arm, which was being worked on by Rockhound and Max at a separate section of the hanger. Adena had often ignored the attention she got from men, mostly since she had been working on a rig of majority men for so long that she didn't really notice cat-calls or flirtations as easily as before.

There was also the fact that all men knew if they messed with Adena, they'd have Harry to deal with.

"Hey," Harry snapped at the trainees, glaring at them when they continued to whisper to one another and nudge each other as the motioned toward the woman on the Armadillo. "She'd break you before you had the chance," he warned, watching as they finally stopped muttering and glanced between the tanned woman and Harry.

It shouldn't have been that far off to imagine; Adena's present position revealed the muscle on her arms and her hunched position showed off the taut cords of muscle on her back and shoulders. Accompanying that with the fact that it was _Bear_ at her side, helping her work, only made it all the more terrifying for the small trainees.

Adena finally stopped welding and gave a nod to Bear as he pulled back, allowing them to check over their work. Lifting her glasses up, green eyes looked over to him and Harry just gave her a thumb's up to tell her that they were doing good. "Ready for the next one?" she asked Bear.

"I'll go get it; we should get it on before we have to go meet Truman," he answered before hopping off of the large machine and Adena moved back to the other end of the Armadillo to make the proper measurements on where to weld. Before she got there, however, A.J. popped up from inside of the Armadillo. Raising an eyebrow at him as he just smiled at her, he seemed somewhat embarrassed.

"So…I don't get this," he started, handing her the binder and showing her the section he didn't understand.

"Really?" she asked, surprised. She had expected the gears to be what he understood the most. "Okay, get back in and I'll show you. Bear, be just a minute!" she called, getting a wave to tell her that he had heard before she dropped down inside of Armadillo and moving up behind A.J.. Remembering what she had read in the manual, she easily began to explain to him what each of the levers were for and the settings each had.

"So it's like a really decked out car," he asked, glancing up at her as she looked down at him in exasperation.

"Sure, if that helps. Yea, it's a really weird, big car for outer-space."

Pulling herself back onto the roof, Bear was waiting for her with the support set up and in place. "Want me to do the welding this time?" he asked, but she declined and pulled her goggles back down to protect her eyes. Kneeling in front of the support, she waited until Bear's gloved hands were holding it in place before she switched the torch on again and carefully began to weld it into place.

Outside of the hanger, the sun was fully visible in the sky once more and an entire troop of Air Force pilots were making their way to the hanger, dressed for flight. Chuck, Sharp and Hammer were at the front of the pack, meeting up with Harry at the entrance of the hanger along with a small gathering of other NASA trainees. "Good morning, Mr. Stamper," Chuck greeted, reaching out to shake the man's hand. "I'm Chuck Jr, you'll be flying with me today."

"Great," Harry said unenthusiastically. "You want to start now?"

"Best time of day," he answered, glancing toward the hanger full of loud machinery and flying sparks. As the crew slowly looked over and spotted the flyers, they began to put their things away with the knowledge that they'd be moving on to flying pretty soon. A.J. noticed them from inside of the Armadillo, but because of where Bear and Adena were working he couldn't pop the hatch until they were finished.

"That woman on your crew actually does the work?" one of the trainees behind Sharp asked, getting a cold look from both the Colonel and Harry. Adena and Bear had resumed welding, this time with the woman's back turned to all of them. She was partially lying on the Armadillo to make it easier access to the section she had to weld, her booted booted foot hooked up in one of metal skeletal beams.

Inside of the hanger, Adena had seen Noonan and Oscar move past the Armadillo out of her peripheral and knew that they were heading out so she made sure to finish up quickly and neatly on the support.

"Don't rush, baby girl, plenty of time," Bear reminded, seeing that she didn't want to hold anyone up and was trying to weld faster and get the job done. Nodding her head, she resumed her previous pace and finished up her work perfectly. Harry approached the Armadillo as Adena switched off the blowtorch before looking down to where he was waiting.

"All done," she answered the silent question. Nodding his approval, he lifted his arms to help the woman jump down from the Armadillo, letting Bear jump down on his own. "Ready to fly?" she teased, knowing that the oil driller absolutely hated to fly. He hardly ever went on a plane, using boats as often as he could so she found it greatly amusing that not only was he going through astronaut training but he was about to fly into space in the next week.

"Cute," he grumbled out before moving away from her, hearing her booming laughter as she following behind him. Pulling her goggles off fully and dropping them onto one of the work tables, she and Bear waited on A.J. before they followed the rest of the group to where they were getting their flight suits and helmets.

Spotting Colonel Sharp near the front of their large group, she was tempted to run up and ask him if she was going to be flying with him after all, but decided that she didn't want to seem like too much of a pest and instead continued to poke fun at Harry and then Bear when she realized they were all rather nauseous just at the thought of flying in one of the fighter jets.

"So, what can we expect up there?" Noonan asked her as he fell in step to her left, knowing that she had looked up what jets they were taking and had researched their capabilities. It was the same thing with anything that the crew did. If they were going somewhere new to drill she was the one who did the research on everything that they could expect while in the area.

"Fighter jets, T-38. Two seated, twin-engine supersonic jet trainer. NASA owns thirty-two of these jets. Northrop design that started in the 1950s, made more lightweight for greater speed. Duel seats meant for a student and instructor, but we'll just be there for the ride," she explained, drawing the attention of not only the rest of her crew but some of the flyers as well.

"So it's fast," Rockhound ground out, already sounding sick at the thought of what they were about to endure.

Adena sneered in satisfaction at the perverted man's discomfort. "In 1962 it set the time-to-climb record for 3000, 6000, 9000 and 12000 meters. It was given the nickname _White Rocket."_

"Now you're just being mean," A.J. mumbled from behind her, shoving her in good faith to get her to stop spouting out terrifying facts about the aircrafts they were about to climb in. She decided that she wasn't going to say anything about the Vomit Comet, instead deciding that she was going to enjoy the looks on their faces as someone else explained to them how they would first experience zero gravity.

"This is about the sorriest group of people I have seen in my entire military career," Chuck Jr started once they were all dressed in their flight suits, each with a fitting helmet and other gear on the floor behind them. "Your space flight's gonna be a brutal assault on your senses. I'm here to give you a taste of that. NASA's got some of the finest pilots in the world, and they're gonna be sucking your eyes into the back of your heads." Adena looked around at the men that made up the rest of the semi-circle she was standing in, grinning at the fear on each of their face.

"Load up and enjoy your flight."

Adena was the only one that wasn't deliberately moving slowly toward the line of pilots that stood in waiting for them. She was sure, however, that she was the only one who had her stomach in summersaults because it was at the sight of Colonel Sharp stepping toward to greet her and not because of the impending flight.

"Twenty dollars says I can make you puke," Sharp betted as he met up with her, both stopping as they met eyes and smirked.

"Fifty says I don't," she upped.

"I'll join that one," Harry said as he walked past her with Hammer, "Sorry, Colonel, but I hope you've got the cash to spare." Watts soon joined in and placed her bet that Adena would hurl, believing that the woman was weaker since she had never been in a jet before. She just smiled, however, and followed Sharp to his jet.

He helped her in first, her seat located behind his in a slightly separated compartment. The only way they would be able to communicate would be through the coms in their helmets. She let him help her with her helmet and breather, buckling her into the seat securely so that she wouldn't go rattling around when he twisted and spun them, as he was sure to do. Adena fought the urge to shiver every time his hands brushed along her sides of shoulders, checking her harness to make sure that it was secure.

"Sure you're ready for me?" Sharp asked with a smirk once she was settled in, preparing to step into his compartment.

"Take me to those stars, Fly Boy," she returned with a smirk to match, raising an eyebrow that could very well have changed the meaning of her words as he ducked out of sight. Waiting patiently until Sharp's voice crackled to life through the earpiece she was wearing, Adena was still smiling in sheer excitement when the glass dome above their heads closed down around them and locked them inside of the jet.

Sharp was one of the first to take off down the tarmac, launching them into the air as Adena gave a laugh of sheer joy at the tightening in her stomach. He didn't waste any time in beginning with spins, twisting them through the air as they made their way up to the clouds that had gathered that morning. Holding onto the seat between her legs, Adena continued to cheer as Sharp began to make barrel rolls in the clouds, being sure to avoid the other planes in the air. He was strangely enjoying the excited sounds that Adena was making from the back cockpit, screaming not in fear but out of absolute enjoyment to the point of near orgasmic bliss.

"You weren't joking about loving things fast," Sharp joked through the comm. inside of the plane. "I'm still going to make you throw up."

"Give me your best, Colonel!" she called back, leaning back against the seat in preparation. He didn't disappoint as they bolted forward, her insides seeming to launch back against her spine as she was pushed further back into the seat. She was almost certain that there would be a body shaped crater left after she peeled herself off of it.

In a way that would probably be incredibly strange to…everybody, Adena found her heart racing and her cheeks flushing, that only happened when she was intimate with a man. She was sure not to make any noises that would alert the Colonel in front of her to her state, but the thought of him being the one flying did not help her in the least as she pressed her legs together and gripped at the sides of the cockpit to hold onto something. The g-forces threatened to suck her arms back against her sides, but she held on for dear left and refused to budge.

"Faster!" she cheered from the back, hearing Sharp's laugh in her ear before he could stop himself as he made a sharp roll to the right that threw her about in the back for a moment.

Soon, however, the ride had to come to an end and they were touching back down on the runway, rolling toward NASA until they hit a complete stop out of the way of the other landing jets. Adena was heaving for breath in the back, pulling her helmet off and shaking her head to try and clear her thoughts. She was totally having way too much fun, she knew. It was wrong for someone to get so aroused simply because of adrenaline, but she couldn't help how she was effected.

"You owe me fifty bucks," she shouted up to Sharp as the hatch above them opened, letting in the cooler air and wind. It felt nice on Adena's flushed face and she hoped that she returned to her normal colour before Sharp saw her. He was already climbing out of the plane, glancing toward those who had already landed.

"I think you're the only one who didn't throw up," Sharp commented as he helped her out of her harness, unhooking her straps and taking her helmet from her to get it out of the way. When he finally looked into her eyes, he paused at their dilated appearance, along with her flushed cheeks and uncontrollable smile. "Have fun?"

"Can we go again?" she asked, unable to stop herself. Pulling herself up from her seat, it brought her face closer to Sharp's as she continued to smile, the pilot looked incredibly intrigued at her reaction. He really had been hoping that he would win that bet, but at the same time he couldn't help that he was incredibly pleased that she had _fun_ while he was pulling out all of his tricks up in the clouds.

It hadn't necessarily helped that she had damn near propositioned him just before they took off, even though he wasn't sure if that was actually what she meant or if he was the only one that felt the sexual tension.

"Sorry, we've still got one more bird to fly," he answered, reminding her that they still had to fly up in the D-C9, or the Vomit Comet.

Helping her down from the jet, Adena watched as several of the guys either had to be helped back toward the hanger or were still hunched over and dropping their breakfast on the ground. "Are you sure you want them to throw up more?" she asked a moment later, standing next to Sharp as they looked over the crew together.

"I don't think there's going to be anything else to throw up," he answered, getting a snicker from the slightly shorter woman before they made their way toward the rest of the team, meeting up in the hanger. Sharp left her to address the trainees while Adena went to visit the rest of the team, teasing them that she had been the only one not to lose her insides over the entire thing. Several of them were pale and shaking with a sheen of sweat covering them, but she found that Harry and Chick didn't appear as bad.

"You threw up, didn't you?" she asked Harry, but he didn't answer—that was answer enough.

"Attention drillers," Sharp called from the other end of the room. "We're not done here. Now we'll be taking you for a little ride." Leading them out another set of doors to another runway, there was sitting a large plane roughly the size of a jumbo-jet. "This bird will climb forty thousand feet and drop to ten thousand feet to give you a feeling of weightlessness for thirty seconds." Sharp was yelling against the sound of the engines starting up as the crew looked at the jet with a new appearance of being sick. "Welcome to NASA's Vomit Comet."

The ride upward was easy; they were strapped into seats in the beginning until they peeked at the 40 thousand feet and were given the order to leave their seats. Sharp was at the front of the plane, near the cockpit, and was watching over the crew. They were standing in anticipation, not sure what to expect. He had a grip on the wall to be sure that he didn't float out of place and instead could keep an eye on the crew. Adena was standing still and looked out one of the windows.

"Get ready," Sharp warned moments before the plan took a nose dive downward, initiating an artificial feeling of zero-gravity. Adena lifted off the ground and walking up the wall next to the window, feeling Harry pull on her shoulder back to causing her to do a backward spin. The guys had no idea how to control themselves and began bumping into one another and floating about, Bear kind of just floating like a beached whale in the center of them.

An alarm went off through the cabin before the plane leveled off and everyone inside slammed back down to the floor. Adena barely landed on her feet from the spin she had been in with Harry, while the rest of the guys either landed roughly on their backs or on their stomachs. Harry had remained on his feet and Chick made it to his knees, but that others were left groaning in discomfort on the floor.

"Wanna go again?" Sharp nearly taunted as they plane turned nose up and began climbing fast, which resulted in the G-forces nearly suctioning them to the floor of the plane.

They did this several more times until the men could manoeuvre themselves around, at least somewhat. Adena had taken to just floating horizontally, giving herself a moment to right her body just before the alarm sounded. Today was one of the better days of training.

**I tried to update this story yesterday, but I ended up having to stay overtime at work so I instead just fell onto my bed and fell asleep, sorry! Anyway, after a well-deserved morning of sleeping in and hording coffee, I hope you enjoyed this update **


	6. Without Trust, We Fail

**Without Trust, We Fail**

Over the next several days they continued with the physical tests until they had both completed the Armadillos and the Chief Medical Examiner deemed them as prepared as they could be for the simulations. Completing the repairs and changes on the Armadillo came first and they were soon driving both out of the hanger to be taken out for field testing. Adena found herself straddling the newly installed driller arm on the Armadillo that Max was driving, Rockhound sitting a little ways behind her.

"How does this feel between your legs, General?" he taunted, getting snickers from the other men that heard.

"Better than that fucking Enama probe," she answered in return. Rockhound groaned at the memory as the rest of the guys shouted their feelings, hating that particular event in their 'training'. Waiting at the entrance to the hanger, Truman and their pilots were waiting and watching as the completed Armadillos were ridden out into the open air for the first time since the crew had arrived on base.

They were going to be doing their armadillo training for most of the day, but near the end they were going to start with the underwater simulations. Adena was mostly only helpful during the Armadillo training if one of the guys didn't understand what they were supposed to be doing with any certain switch inside of the damn thing, and so she was, for the most part, standing around getting a tan that gradually reddened into a burn on the back of her shoulders.

"Fuck," she swore as she adjusted her sunglasses against the sunlight, moving to stand under the shade of one of the transport trucks. They had the large blue emblem of NASA painted on the side of them, broadcasting who was standing out in the middle of the desert at noon on a burning hot day. She had learned early on during training to remain out of the way when the guys were practicing with the Armadillos, since they were still getting used to them and had nearly run someone over on more than one occasion.

Things soon calmed down and they were able to get some actual training in that was just short of actually drilling. They were going to practice once in underwater simulation before they were expected to do any outside test drilling. "Well, at least we know they can drive 'em," Chick tried to assure as he moved to stand in the shade with her, squinting even through his sunglasses.

"You're welcome," she teased, getting a shoulder shove by the man as she laughed at her own prideful joke. "How are you feeling?"

"I was almost road-killed by a man half my age, how do you think?" he retorted, getting a snort of amusement from Adena.

Adena was never more relieved than later that day to get away from the heat of the desert, knowing that there was literally a pool just waiting for her. Even if she had to wear a special suit that mimicked their space suits, it was still better than the open desert heat and sun. Pulling on a tight uniform that was something like a wet suit beneath her space suit and then climbing into the space suit, Adena felt like a balloon.

"Gentleman, welcome to our weightless environmental training facility," Truman called over their earpieces. Adena was going into the water with Harry, Max, Rockhound and Chick, as well as all of the NASA trainers that were swimming around in scuba gear in case anything went wrong.

"So, we're going swimming on this asteroid, is that what this is for?" Rockhound asked as he and Adena were lowered into the water, standing back to back on a platform that would make it easier for them to get in and out of the pool while they were in their suits.

"Da-dun, da-dun," Adena mocked, remembering when Rockhound had taken her to see Jaws.

"Take this seriously, guys. Come on, General, I need you focused for me," Harry called through their ear pieces, causing Adena to apologize as she was helped to swim over to where the simulation was actually taking place near the deep end of the already large pool.

In another room alongside the pool room, A.J. and his team were sitting with Truman, and the pilots, watching through the cameras as they worked. They could hear everything that they were saying, letting them learn from whatever mistakes they made. Harry remained calm as he commanded them through their duties, keeping each of them busy enough that they didn't actually have time to think. Adena struggled the most with the whole process because she was so unaccustomed to the large gloves of the suit that it slowed down her ability to move her hands and do her job.

"Just take it easy, Dee, take a breath and keep trying," Harry ordered when he heard her nearly growl in irritation.

"Bet you wish you had large hands now, huh, General?"

"Shut up and focus Rockhound," Harry ordered, watching as Adena firmly ignored the other man and was able to successfully turn the gauges in front of her to change the pressure that was being put into the drill.

"More torque," Harry ordered Chick, keeping his own focus on the readings in front of him. He knew that the computers were going to give them slight difficulties so that it didn't seem too easy in comparison to the real thing and he needed to be ready for when that happened.

"He has good control," Truman commented as he watched through the monitors, listening to Harry command his team. It sounded like he had done this all before, and in a way he had, and was relieved that the man was taking up his own team. It was just like he had said when he first met the men that had originally been going up_. If you don't trust the men that you're working with you're as good as dead._

When they hit a simulated gas pocket, Harry made sure to keep them all focused and carefully made his way through it, guiding the others as well. Adena had to force herself to remain calm when her annoyance with the suits nearly got in the way, but with Harry's orders in her ear and the guys working all around her she knew that she would be fine.

Soon they were being lifted from the tank, two by two, and switching places with A.J.'s team. Adena had to basically be lifted from her suit by Max when she was too small to successfully hoist herself out without falling on her face. Each of them were covered in sweat from the stress and from the heat inside of the suits, not nearly as bad as the desert but still less than fun.

"Can I just jump in?" Adena asked as she looked over to Truman, motioning to the pool. "Can completely skip a shower, just one quick dunk."

Truman, however, just smiled and shook his head. Pouting, Adena left toward the women's change room to get her jumpsuit back on and out of the tight wetsuit like material that she was forced to wear beneath the spacesuit.

After the teams had both gone through one successful simulation they were let go for the evening, the later hours already pressing down on them. Adena made her way through the clean halls to where she had been given her own room, since Grace had insisted on staying with A.J., without Harry's knowledge of course. After she had taken a shower to wash away the days sweat, she had no other thought than to try and catch up on some sleep. It was hard to move in the suits while in the pool and her muscles were tired after the amount of time they had spent inside of them.

Stopping outside of one of the hangers on her way past, moving from one of the facilities back to the main one, she spotted the very large empty space that now occupied where the X-71 had been when the first arrived at NASA. Glancing around at all of the different hangers, she found herself wondering what was in each of them. The largest of the buildings was the main base, where the pool and other simulations rooms were located.

Deciding against going to bed just yet, Adena made her way to where she remembered the majority of the planes were stored, mostly the ones under construction or repair. To her surprise, she spotted Colonel Sharp making his way down from the upper floors, where she knew some of the old base of operations had been before NASA was given a fund for new equipment.

"Colonel," she called, stopping him before he had even gotten to the bottom of the stairs.

"Miss King," he greeted in return as he took a slower pace the rest of the way down the steps. "You did a good job for your first weightless environment simulation," he praised, getting a smile from the woman that told of her secret bashfulness.

"It's gunna take a bit more for me to get used to those suits," she mumbled, looking down at her hand. The gloves had been so large on her, even though she was wearing one of the smallest suits that were meant for women of a small stature. "You know, you still owe me the fifty bucks," she reminded, but he could see that she was only joking from the teasing tone of her voice.

Sharp found himself following her into the deeper parts of the hanger, where the older planes and shuttles were stored. "When I first flew, I used to wonder what it would have been like to fly a NASA space shuttle," Sharp admitted as he lifted a hand to brush the underside of the shuttle they were walking beneath. "Never thought this was how I would end up doing it."

"Well, I never thought I'd be going up into space," Adena responded, leaning against the landing gear. Sharp noticed then that what he had thought was her regular braid of dark hair was actually her wet, freshly showered hair twisted to keep over her shoulder. It was beginning to fall free in deep brown locks, dampening her dark undershirt. Just as it always was, she had her jumpsuit top around her waist to keep her arms free.

"If it wasn't for the morbidity of the situation, I'd tell you that it's going to be beautiful, and a wonder that not many people get to see." Sharp moved to lean against the wheel beside her, crossing his arms in a fashion that nearly mirrored hers.

"Now it's just a…tragic beauty," she continued for him, before letting out a sigh. "I just hope that this is all worth it."

Turning to face her, Sharp leaned down so that he didn't have to speak up in order for her to hear exactly what he was saying. "The people here have faith in you. Forget about the world, do this for those who doubted you could. Make it worth it so they can't judge or question you." Adena looked up to those striking blue eyes, wanting to believe that that his words were enough. It was too much pressure to just remove from ones shoulders; she was going to carry it all the way to that asteroid and all the way back until they were told that the bomb had gone off and the world was safe.

"Just promise me that if we survive this, if the world survives this, you'll take me flying again," she finally answered, hoping to lighten the dark mood that she had set over them.

Laughing so faintly, it was more a huff of air, Sharp nodded along even as he found his attention straying down to her lips from when she had spoken. She had brushed her teeth, he could tell, by the smell of mint on her breath. Adena was not ignorant to where he was looking and found that she was getting that fluttery feeling in her stomach once more, much as it had been when she was getting strapped into his plane.

"I promise," he whispered before he finally gave in, finally leaned down to claim her lips. Adena pushed back to meet his force, lifting a hand to the back of his head and running her fingers up through his short hair. It was soft to the touch, she found, and tickled her hand because of the length of the strands. Nearly gnashing his teeth with hers as she pulled him close, feeling his arm wind around her waist and his body press her backward, Adena didn't care just how desperate she most likely appeared.

Once more, his suit was already unzipped in the front and allowed for her to slide her hands in, pushing the deep blue material backward and off of his shoulders. Sharp tried to manoeuvre himself from the top portion of his suit without letting go of Adena, causing a small amount of struggling, before he was only left in his white undershirt that revealed that even though he was thin he was also in very good shape.

Tugging at his bottom lip with her teeth, Adena gave into her curiosity and slipped her arms beneath the soft cotton of his shirt and traced up his defined sides and stomach with her hands. The muscles twitched and danced beneath her fingers, jumping at the sensation of a foreign touch. Her hands were rough from working on oil rigs, but they were warm against his skin and Sharp fought a groan as he bent at the knees in order to get a hold of Adena's thighs.

Letting out a shocked laugh as she was lifted from the ground, Adena was forced to change her hold on Sharp to instead wrap her arms around his shoulders as he held her up, pushed back against the landing gear. He was shockingly gentle in the action, pressing her back but still very aware that he could press her too hard into the metal behind her. His hands flexed on her thighs, feeling how strong they actually were. He had ample opportunity to see how strong she was in upper body, but he hadn't known what her legs may have looked like because of the suits.

Adena peppered kisses against Sharp's lips before she moved to follow his cleanly shaven jaw until reaching his ear. Her breath hitched in pleasure when his lips fell upon her neck, warm and soft.

Deeper inside of the NASA base, Harry was marching through the barely lit halls as the men of his team trooped behind him trying to keep up with his long strides. Trying to control his temper so that he didn't march back and injure A.J. again, Harry was left to listen to the guys as they tried to defend the man that had fallen in love with their boss's daughter. Or at least defend the daughter's decisions.

"I'm just saying, Grace is not a little girl anymore, Harry."

"Hey, Rock, wait a minute. Let me get a pencil and piece of paper; I wanna jot down all of your pearls of wisdom here," Harry snapped at the shorter of the two.

"Get serious, Harry," Rockhound continued to try and defend. "Come on. While we were off trottin the globe, hunting mud, Gracie grew up to become a full blown hottie, ya know?"

As Max began to toss in his two cents on what he thought of Grace, Harry held up his hand to try and get them to stop. When he and Rockhound didn't get the message and just continued, Harry looked ready to punch the other man. "Max! Max, okay, you're talking about my little girl, all right?"

Oscar decided that it must have been his turn as he put a hand on Harry's arm to get his attention. "Harry, all we're saying is, we're talking about a kid who's coming into her own right now and she's getting curious about her body and she's exploring her sexuality. You know what?"

"Oscar-"

"That's a natural thing."

"You are about five minutes older than Grace is, why should I listen to you?"

When Oscar started in again, getting onto a rant that was going to get him hurt, Bear decided to step in before Harry completely lost his temper. "No disrespect man, but we all helped raise her. So, in part, we all feel like a bunch of daddies here."

"That's true," Rockhound agreed, understanding that Bear was taking a much more intelligent route than the rest of them had tried.

"Well, I'll be damned if I worked all these years so my little girl can marry a roughneck." Shaking his head, he looked at the men that were standing around him. "She's better than that. She's better than all of us."

"What about your other little girl?" Chick asked from where he had remained out of the conversation, leaning against one of the platforms beneath a plane that they worked from. "You know Adena's always been against you running her life. She's actually worked the rigs, in the end she _is_ a roughneck."

"No," Harry denied. "She's a genius. And some day she's gunna realize that and move on to do amazing things. I won't let her get tied down to just another guy that drills for oil," he finalized.

"What about a Colonel of the US Air Force?" Chick asked after a moment of hesitation. All men present turned to look at him, where he was instead looking through the observation window to the lower level of the building. Harry was almost too afraid to look at what situation his other 'daughter' could be in, but stepped up to the window with an emotionless face.

One story below, leaned against an older, failed shuttle's landing gear, Adena was basically wrapped around Colonel Will Sharp, with her arms around his shoulders and her ankles locked behind his back. However, whatever they may have been doing any time before Chick spotted them, they were now simply holding on to one another, Adena's fingers running through Sharp's short hair as she buried her face in his neck and shoulder.

"Well, she could definitely have done worse than a Colonel," Rockhound pointed out.

Harry couldn't say anything, because he was right. Someone that was in the military, that would be strong and be there to support her, was much better than someone like A.J.

Adena pulled back from the tangled embrace she and Sharp had ended up in against the landing gear, letting her feet drop back down to the floor as she took his face in her hands. His eyes were still closed, savoring in the moment of peace while he still could. Drawing herself up, she pressed a soft, lingering kiss to his lips as he leisurely began to rock them from side to side, almost in the imitation of a dance.

In that moment they had peace and clarity, a reprieve from the dangers hurtling toward Earth.

**Well, you finally get an actual kiss scene ;)**

**Hope everyone loved it and I look forward to any reviews you have for me!**


	7. Let's Play a Game Life or Death

**Let's Play a Game: Life or Death**

The days of training all seemed to blur together as the crew went through their training with the Armadillos, the simulations, the studying and the physical and mental tests. They sat through conferences that explained step by step what was going to take place once they were strapped in to the shuttles until they were, hopefully, safely back home on Earth. Adena centered her concentration on each word that was said, making sure that there was not a thing she didn't remember for when they finally launched themselves into space.

When it came to their first day trying on the actual suits they were going to wear, her head was starting to ache from the readings that she had been putting herself through about the shuttles they were using and what had been used in the past for launches to the space station or to the moon. This suit fit much better than the one used for underwater simulations, as she stood between Bear and Rockhound in their semi-circle in front of Watts she felt incredibly tiny.

Watching the video that was being played on a small monitor as Watts was explaining the new suits, Adena tried hard to ignore Bear's unmistakable baritone next to her.

"He's bouncing because there's less gravity up there than on Earth," Watts was saying as she motioned to the screen. "This will be similar to the Asteroid, so watch it. Something gets launched off that asteroid with enough force, it's gunna keep on going; right into outer space."

"What is the deal?" Oscar was saying next to Bear, causing the tanned woman to supress and eye-roll. "Is it just me, or is Watts really hot?"

Bear and Rockhound both agreed as Adena actually did roll her eyes. She was going to die if she didn't get away from the testosterone of her crew. She missed having those breaks they got away from the rig. "So, we have these new generation suits with Directional Accelerant Thrusters," Watts continued, either ignorant to the conversation of the guys or just choosing to ignore it. Looking past where Watts was speaking, Adena met Sharp's eyes from where he was standing behind the TV screen, leaning down on it with one arm while facing the drilling crew. She had to force herself not to smile and looked back at Watts. "You won't bounce like Neil Armstrong." Then, without missing a beat, "_Bear!_"

The large black man's head whipped back toward Watts so fast his chin smacked the metal neck of his suit and Adena couldn't prevent her smile this time.

"Yes?" he asked politely, startled at the woman's authoritative shout.

"Do we have a problem?" she asked in the same tone, her easy-going attitude altered as Adena just continued to smile away, looking to Bear to see whether or not he was sweating.

"No," he answered shortly, hoping to avoid getting in more trouble.

Watts began to approach him as she spoke up again, clearly not intimidated that he was over a foot taller than she was. "'Cause I'm trying to describe to you how these D.A.T.'s keep your ass on the ground, so that if I were to kick you in the balls-"

Rockhound made a sound of pain on Adena's other side as Watts stopped in front of Bear.

"-And you don't know how to work them, what happens to you?"

"I'd float away."

"Yea," Watts confirmed, dead serious as she continued to stare down the large man. Adena found herself wondering if such a situation would arise, but then remembered that Watts would not be leaving the shuttle, but instead keeping in touch with Houston for as long as they could. She wasn't going to be leaving the shuttle unless it was due to life or death situations. Maybe Adena would have to kick someone in the balls?

"And when do we start training for that," Rockhound teased, before glancing over to where Adena had turned to him with a deadpan stare.

"Are you volunteering, 'Hound?" she questioned shortly. The seriousness on her face caused the older man to step away from her, bumping into Chick as the guys chuckled at Adena's scare tactic. She had never been easy on Rockhound after the years of torment he put her through, especially when she got older and he had targeted her ass on several occasions.

"Gentlemen, I'll give you thirty seconds to put your helmets on, then the oxygen will be sucked out of this vacuum and you will know what it's like to be in space," Watts answered Rockhound's sarcastic question, nodding toward the rack that was holding their helmets. Each one was labelled near the base, off of the actual glass, so that they took the one that would properly hook up to their suit size. Glancing to Adena once before she turned to depart with the other pilots, she winked in jest at the laughing green eyes staring back at her.

With their helmets all properly connected, as they had been taught to do several times over, they group stood in the center of the room as the large metal door began to close behind the retreating pilots.

"You know, Watts is kind of like a blonde haired, blue eyed Adena," Rockhound was saying, not realizing that their communicators allowed for her to hear what he was intending to be say to Oscar and Bear. "Which one scares you more?"

Oscar and Bear were both staring over Rockhound's shoulder to where Adena had been helping Noonan, checking his helmet when he became slightly paranoid that he hadn't done it correctly. She was staring toward Rockhound with icy green eyes. "Adena," both men said in answer as Rock flinched as he finally realized she could hear what he was saying.

"Sweetie, you wouldn't really kick me in the—okay, never-mind," Rockhound nearly hid behind Bear when she had only tipping her head forward in challenge, cutting off his full question with a very physically threatening answer.

Oscar was laughing in pure joy as the room began to depressurize. "All of those years of grabbing at her ass, she warned you. Now you act surprised when she finally follows through on those threats. What did she say to us during the physical exams?"

"That she'd kick you in the balls until you sung soprano, now, focus," Harry scolded, remembering the moment that they were talking about with less than fond feelings. Soon, the crew began to feel that same weightlessness that came with the nosedive on the Vomit Comet, without the added nausea of flying, and were beginning to bounce and float around the room.

"_Alright, I want you to activate your D.A.T.'s, now,_" Watt's ordered through their earpieces. Immediately, all of the crew flipped the switch on their suits, activating the thrusters that would keep them anchored toward the ground. Adena wobbled slightly when first activating them, as it felt like her body was being pulled in two different directions. Without the gravity, her body wanted to float, but the thrusters were almost like a hand pressing down on her back to keep her on the ground.

"_Anybody feeling sick, yet?" _Harry asked, looking around at the standing crew. Max and Oscar raised their hands slightly, beginning to feel that same put off feeling as Adena, but not to the point that they had reached while on the Vomit Comet plane_._

"_Remember, these don't give the full effect of gravity. Getting launched into the air by, say, a gas pocket will push you too far away from the ground for the thrusters to work properly," _Sharp added through the com link. The pilots were all standing in the survey room, watching the crew over the monitors as they adjusted themselves to the suits.

"_I wanna try that," _Rockhound said before Adena felt hands on her waist and she was pushing upward into the air, shouting in surprise.

"Rockhound!" she shouted in annoyance, trying to right herself.

"_Adena, shut off your thrusters," _Watts ordered, which Adena followed immediately. When she reached the wall of the large, cylindrical room, she was able to get a sense of stability as she stood on the metal side and hooked her foot in the supports.

Below her, Harry was shouting and scolding Rockhound as Bear moved over to her and try and reach her. Pushing off the wall to where Bear was waiting, she let him help her back onto the ground before she switched the thrusters back on. Rockhound was laughing over the comm., clearly having had his fun for the day.

"Harry, do you mind if I test what happens when a guy gets kicked in the balls in space?" Adena asked in an annoyed voice, standing firmly on the ground once more.

"_This is serious, guys. Rock, do that again and I _will_ let her kick you in the balls, got that_?" Harry finished, keeping Adena away from Rockhound so that she didn't end up kicking him anyway.

"_Come on, I was just having some fun, Harry_-"

"_This is not about you having fun_," Sharp interrupted, silencing all of them by the clear annoyance and anger in his voice. "_Had you actually been on the asteroid right now, it is more than likely had Adena would be long gone with no chance of getting her back. These simulations are meant to prepare you for the real thing, so how about a bit of serious intent for the sake of mankind? Play your games _after_ the fate of the world is no longer in your hands and the hands of the crew member that you would have just murdered._"

Even though she was extremely annoyed with Rockhound, she almost wanted to defend him against Sharp. However, they were running low on time and she knew that he was a serious man. To have to deal with a team that almost always joked around he would most likely be running very low on patience. So, instead of trying to say 'I'm fine' or 'come on, it's not that bad' she just waited for the signal for them to continue their practice.

After leaving the NASA Vacuum, they made their way back to the main NASA base, where they had their headquarters that allowed them to stay in contact with those who were in space. With only six days remaining, before the asteroid would hit Earth, they needed to make sure everything was clear and covered. That was why the found themselves sitting in a conference room with Truman and Quincy taking their attention.

"Okay, gentlemen, so here's the flight plan," Truman began as he picked up two long sticks that had plastic shuttle models on the ends, acting as his props. "Now, let's keep the laughter to a minimum, I know this is not to scale," he muttered more to himself as he moved to where there was a globe of the Earth suspended on a string, hanging from the ceiling. "Both shuttles will take off Tuesday at Six-Thirty P.M." Glancing back at them to make sure all was understood, he continued. "Now, sixty-seven minutes later, you're gunna dock with the Russian Space Station and meet Cosmonaut Andropov, who will refuel the shuttles with liquid O2—that's your fuel—then you'll release and take a sixty hour trip toward the moon."

Adena was still trying to grasp how long they were actually going to be on those shuttles, even though she had calculated the math and knew he was correct.

"Now, we only have one shot of landing on this rock," Truman stressed as he looked down the table at each of them. They weren't the ones piloting, but they still needed to know the severity of the situation. "And that's precisely when the Asteroid passes by the moon. You'll then use lunar gravity, and burn your thrusters, sling-shotting you around the moon, coming up behind the Asteroid. You'll be upward of eleven G's."

"Yea, I remember this one," Rockhound interrupted, drawing eyes on him instead. Adena leaned forward in her seat, since she was all the way at the other end of the table, to get a better look at the pervert of the group. "It's where the Coyote sat his ass down in a slingshot and he strapped himself to an Acme rocket. Is that—is that what we're doing here?"

"Rockhound," Harry tried to intervene.

"No, no, really, because it didn't work out too well for the Coyote, Harry," he stressed, creating a tenseness in the room.

"It'll work," Adena said as she leaned on her elbows on the table, drawing his slightly crazed eyes to look at her instead of their boss. "I've done the math, Rock, and I know that you have, too. It'll work, as cartoon-y as it may sound."

"I assure you," Truman cut in, "We have a lot better rockets than the Coyote." Rockhound went quiet before leaning back in his seat again, still unsettled but chastised for interrupting. "Now, when you've finished your 'Roadrunner-Thrust' move, you'll be moving at 22,500 miles per hour, coming around behind the asteroid—where we're hoping that the tail debris will be cleared by the moon's gravity. And you'll land right here, that's it." Using the props, he and Quincy acted it out in a rather humorous display before the lecturing was passed off to another NASA specialist.

"We got special landing sites for each team," he began right away, "softest parts of the rock as we can figure. At NASA, we don't take chances. We double up on everything. First team that hits 800 feet, wins." Adena found herself worrying that A.J. may just take that to heart and try to race Harry and her team to the 'finish'. "Now, this rock is big, it's dense, it's got some gravity, you can walk around on it. But use your thrusters, so you can work easier."

When he finished speaking, Oscar decided it best to voice his question before too long. "Ok, Mr. Truman, let's say we actually land on this. What's it gunna be like up there?"

Looking up, Adena found herself wondering the same. "Two-hundred degrees in the sunlight, minus two-hundred in the shade. Canyons of razor sharp rock. Unpredictable gravitational conditions. Unexpected eruptions. Things like that." His words seemed to drop a stone into Adena's stomach as she fell back to lean in her chair once more, lifting her hands to wipe at her face with a long sigh.

"So the scariest environment imaginable? Thanks. That's all you gotta say: scariest environment imaginable," Oscar replied, looking a bit paler than he had before. He was fidgeting as well, playing with the pen and clipboard that was in front of him, in front of each of them.

Sharp, sitting directly next to Adena, glanced over to her as she took in a deep breath and composed herself, retuning her attention to Truman as he finished up their meeting. "So, you drill, you drop the Nuke, and you leave. Now, there's the key. You're gonna remote detonate the bomb before the Asteroid passes this plane, Zero Barrier." Quincy started a computer simulation of the Earth with a dotted barrier around it. A computerized asteroid was blown in half and the two sections flew past the graphic Earth. "You do that, and the remaining pieces of rock should be deflected enough to pass right by us. Now, if the bomb explodes after Zero Barrier…"

The simulation played again, only this time with the asteroid splitting past the dotted line and the two large chunks hitting either side of the globe, the Earth disappearing along with the rocks from the screen.

"Game's over."

**Thank you all for reading, I hope you enjoyed this chapter!**

**One thing that kind of bugged me, just as a side note, please don't review this story asking for me to update a different one. You can review that story just as easily as this one, and it would make a lot more sense when I don't get someone asking me to update a vampire story when reviewing for Armageddon. Better yet, send me a PM! But just because people ask me to update doesn't mean I will or can, I'm very erratic in my updates, I know and I'm sorry, but there's often nothing I can do. If I'm not busy, there's always the possibility that I just…I don't know, have no inspiration, or writer's block. It happens.**

**Anyway, sorry for rambling. If you have any thoughts on **_**this**_** story, please review!**


	8. Losing Life Support

**Losing Life Support**

After finishing in the conference room, everyone went their own way to explore the base or to have some time to their own thoughts. Sharp watched as Adena left the room before making a split second decision to follow after her. No one questioned where he was going, since they were not scheduled for any further training for the night. He didn't have to go far to find her sitting in the front entrance to the building. She had jogged the stairs to take a seat on the catwalk above the room, looking out the large glass window toward the sky.

"For someone whose team is like family, you avoid them a lot," Sharp said in greeting, drawing a laugh from her before she motioned to the section of floor next to her. She was leaning on the railing bar next to her, her legs dangling off the ledge like a child sitting on a dock. "Feeling alright? Truman seemed to have shaken you."

"I guess I just had this perfect, easy trip planned out in my mind—kind of like it was my comfort blanket against the truth—and now it's gone," she explained with a shrug. "I've been reading up on all of NASA's notes, so I really shouldn't be surprised, but here I am. Guess I'm weaker than I thought." Pausing for a moment, she gave a tight smile. "Truman popped my life raft."

Sharp shook his head in denial as he placed a heavy hand on the back of her neck, drawing her full attention to him. "You're not weak, you're human. We're all scared of what could go wrong, but all we can do it try our best to get everything right." Leaning forward to rest his head against hers, the hand on the back of her neck pulling her closer, they closed their eyes together and sat in silence for a moment.

"Have you every just wished time could stop?" Adena asked after she had calmed slightly, opening her eyes to look into those beautiful baby blues. At his nod, she smiled sadly and continued, "I find myself wishing for that a lot around here. Every time I turn a corner there's another huge clock, slowly counting down to dooms day. Just wish that I could look at one and it's not ticking down, second by second."

Nodding in agreement caused their foreheads to bump together, which ended up with them both laughing softly. "I understand exactly what you mean. But it does serve its purpose, you'll never not know how much time you have left."

"And we're stuck here," she replied with an exasperated sigh, moving to lean against the pole again while she turned her body to face Sharp fully. "Not what I expected when I was younger and someone asked me 'if you had one more week to live, what would you do'. At the time my focus was those stupid things; have my first drink, drive my dream car as fast as I could through the desert all the way to Vegas," she smiled as she paused in looked over to him, "and the most popular, don't die a virgin."

Sharp laughed at her bluntness, knowing that she was definitely correct about the last one.

"But now, it's just thoughts that I'll never fall in love and get married, or have a family of my own." Smiling sadly, she looked back out to the pink sky sunset. "I've always wanted a son."

"Not a daughter?" Sharp asked, thinking of his own two little girls back at their mother's house, unaware to the dangers that they were about to face.

Adena knew what he must have been thinking about because she took his hand in hers, beginning to stroke along the creases in his palm. "I've lived so long with the crew, working with guys, I don't think I'd know how to relate to a daughter."

"You might just surprise yourself," Sharp assured. "I never thought that I could be a father, I used to joke that I was married to my work even when I was still with my wife. When we had our first daughter it was almost like a switch was flipped, and I fell into the roll like I was born for it. You have times when you have _no idea_ what you're doing, but then you can never imagine it ever being different." When Sharp looked up from where she was tracing along his palm, he saw that she was smiling at him so tenderly that his stomach flipped reminded him of his first date as a teenager.

"You must be an amazing dad," she mumbled through her smile, squeezing his hand. He returned the gesture as his thanks, looking toward the window. Sunset had almost passed, leaving them in the dark as most of the lights had been switched off in the building as the workers dispersed for the night.

"If the world was going to end in the next ten seconds, what would you do?" Sharp asked after a moment, trying to see if any stars had appeared through the remaining light in the sky.

A tug on his hand drew the pilot's attention to Adena just as she leant forward to press her lips over his. The kiss wasn't nearly as deep and fierce as it had been the night before while in the hanger, but instead was soothing and filled with a sense of peace that they found when together. Pulling back and stroking her thumb along one of Sharp's strong cheekbones, Adena found that she rather liked the thought of counting down the clock at his side.

Sharp leaned in for a second kiss when Adena's stomach growled rather loudly between them, drawing a loud, spontaneous laugh as her cheeks reddened in embarrassment. Instead of teasing her as she knew the rest of her crew would, Sharp pulled himself to his feet before he offered her a hand for assistance. Smiling through her bashfulness she let him help her up and there was a silent decision as they made their way back into the depths of the building toward the cafeteria.

A.J. and Grace were sectioned away at a table to themselves, sitting close and whispering to each other with smiles as Noonan and Rockhound played a game of cards with Bear eating next to them. Watts was sitting with the two munitions specialists meant to come up with them, having already finished eating and presently sitting and talking calmly.

"And here I thought my last graduation meant no more cafeteria food," Adena mumbled as she and Sharp moved up to where there was food supplied for all that were heading out on the mission, apparently NASA was feeling guilty and decided on free food. Noticing the same soup that Harry had given her, she instead decided on a salad and a chicken wrap that she hoped was cooked properly. She noticed that Sharp just took a sandwich and a bottle of water, she wanted to give him a look that she was sure he gave his kids when they didn't eat their dinner.

However, she most definitely did not want to treat him like her child.

Snatching a can of Dr. Pepper as she was passing the beverages, she glanced to the table that the guys were sitting at before she decided that she didn't want to have to deal with them at the moment and fell to sit at one of the free tables, meant for four. To her slight surprise, Sharp sat down across from her instead of going to join his fellow pilot.

At the table across the room, Bear was keeping a discrete watch on his 'baby girl' as she sat and spoke with Sharp, each eating their own meals between topics. Rockhound tried to watch, but his back was to the couple and Noonan kicked him in the shin when he became too obvious. Noonan tried to keep him informed on what was taking place between the two as they continued to play a lousy game of Crazy Eights, neither entirely focused on it.

Bear gave a low, deep chuckle when he watched Sharp snatch Adena's Dr. Pepper for a drink and she retaliated by throwing a crouton at his face. He dodged to the side in time, but she was given the chance to steal back her can of soda, taking a drink as the Colonel tried to duck down and act as though the events hadn't happened, abashed at his immature actions. "Dude, that's so adorable," Noonan commented when he took notice as well.

They were like two teenagers trying to flirt in high-school.

Adena eventually pushed the salad between them as she was munching on one of her wraps, letting Sharp pick out the croutons that Bear knew she hated, eating them for her. The three men weren't the only ones quite aware of the oddity the two made by sitting together, drawing the attention of Grace and A.J. as well as Watt's and the munition specialists.

"You're as picky as Veronica, my youngest," Sharp laughed when she pushed another crouton away with her fork and stabbed the lettuce that had been beneath it, soaked in dressing. "She hates these, too." Shrugging her shoulders childishly, she had no defence and instead just ate her forkful with a faint grin.

The others in the room were steadily trickling out, first with A.J. and Grace, then Watts and her companions, before Rockhound and the guys were packing up their cards to leave for their rooms. Of course, Rockhound could not leave well enough alone and called back to her as he was making his way out with Noonan, Bear leading the way. "Remember, General, safe sex!"

Without even gracing with him a glare, she stretched her arm back behind her and flipped her middle finger up at him, drawing a laugh from the other two men as they left the room.

"Yes, I call these people my family," Adena said before Sharp even had the chance to comment on Rockhound's behavior. To her relief, he smiled and just shook his head in amusement to the way she acted with them.

Instead, he asked, "Why do they call you General?"

Laughing to herself as she hid her face behind her Dr. Pepper can, she licked her lips to remove the sticky, sweet liquid before trying to decide where to start. "I told you how I was seventeen when I found out my parents died, right? Well, a little while after that I guess I kind of…rebelled. I started to skip work, I got a fake ID, went drinking. It was when I got caught trying to steal this…" she stopped, trying to describe the event. "It was a ten dollar necklace, cheap and made of glass shaped like a crescent moon. I don't even remember why I wanted it so bad, but I just saw it and thought that I had to have it, but I had no money.

"Long and short of it, I got caught and they took me to Harry's since he had basically adopted me without the actual documentation. Two weeks later, he had me shipped off to boot-camp. I was such a little brat when I first got there, but by the end of it the other delinquents sent there were calling me Drill-Sergeant." Sharp found himself laughing as he tried to imagine it, seeing her nodding her head as she clearly understood why he was laughing. "When I got back I kind of retained that no-bullshit attitude, which A.J. _hated_, and started to order the guys around like _I_ was their boss."

"So they started calling you General?"

"Well, at first they just gave a mock salute and said 'Sir, yes, sir!' but once when we had some people visiting to view the progress on a rig, Harry had me doing the main tour and he said to them 'just follow our girl, the General. She'll take care of you' and since then it's stuck."

Shaking his head in disbelief at the story, Adena just shrugged her shoulders with a smile of her own, thinking back to the event fondly. She had never felt more like a part of the family than in that moment.

Clearing away their garbage once they had finished, Adena felt reluctant to go their separate ways, but she knew that she needed to grab a shower and head to bed because they were going to be up early the next day in order to get in more Armadillo training. They would be out on the test site at the crack of dawn, so they all needed to be ready for an early day.

They continued to walk together until they reached the hall that had Adena's room, Sharp's room one floor higher. "Well, g'night Colonel," Adena said with a teasing salute, still smiling. Sharp took her hand from where it was still raised against her forehead, adjusting it to the proper position of a salute.

"If you're gunna mock me, do it the right way," he teased back, watching her smile grow instead of getting offended. "Good night, Miss King."

"Just call me Adena," she corrected, remembering when he had said her name while they were in the Vacuum and quite liking how personal it was.

"Then you have to call me Will," he proposed, leaning down to steal a quick kiss before he could second guess his actions, then he turned the corner they had come from to get back to the stairs they had passed that would take him up to his room. Adena watched him go for a moment, admittedly staring at his butt a moment more than she should have, before heading down to her room to collect her things for a quick shower with a rather silly, but so happy, grin on her face. She knew that most of the guys would want to shower in the morning, but she would rather sleep in a bit longer.

"Dee!"

Stopping in surprise, she turned to the door she had just passed to see Grace slipping from A.J.'s room with a smile. Waiting for her sister-figure to close the door, Adena began to walk back toward her room to collect her things as Grace walked briskly next to her.

"I'm going to shower, wanna join?" she asked in a quiet voice, knowing that there were people trying to sleep in that hallway. Nodding her head, Grace turned back to A.J.'s room to get her things as Adena did the same with her bag. Together, they walked to the large change room that also had a shower section, the different showers divided by a floor to ceiling stone wall and a curtain that acted as a door.

"Having fun with A.J.?" Adena poked as she dropped her bag on the counter and pulled out her soap and towel, leaving room for Grace to do the same.

"I could ask you the same about Colonel Sharp," she retorted, causing the two of them to giggle. Before they actually started to undress, Adena wrapped her arms around the shorter woman with a smile. Grace returned the hug immediately, having felt the absence of a female companion as much as she had. Neither of them had really been able to see a woman outside of NASA workers or Watts.

Soon wrapped in their towels, the women stepped into side-by-side showers. "I can't really say what's happening with me and Will—I mean, I wish I could have met him when the world wasn't in peril," Adena admitted as she ducked under the warm spray of water to soak her hair. Grace was doing much the same in the adjacent shower, listening to her friend. "What if we both survive this and he decides that now that he has a second chance he'd rather go back to his ex-wife, to see if they could fix things?"

"Has he told her?" Grace asked, leaning out of her shower curtain while remaining covered. Adena did the same, her hair lathered with foamy soap. Grace almost snickered at the woman's usually strict appearance destroyed by soapy hair piled atop her head.

"No, he hasn't told anyone. But he's got two little girls with her-"

"I think that if he was so desperate to get back with her, he'd have told her so he could spend his possible last moments with his wife. There'd be more a chance of seeing her than seeing his daughters," Grace assured with a smile before ducking back into her shower. Adena frowned in thought a moment before doing the same, rinsing the soap from her hair and switching the bottle to her conditioner.

"And you and A.J.?" Adena asked as she twisted her hair to the side to be sure the conditioner soaked in as she was washing the sweat from her body.

In answer, a hand popped into her shower, revealing a simple engagement ring that had Adena letting out an uncharacteristic squeal. Snatching Grace's hand gently, she leaned down to take a closer look as a broad smile spread over her face. "That is so amazing, Grace!"

Grace pulled her hand back and the two leaned out past their curtains again, each with a beaming smile. "He proposed the other day, but I haven't seen you," she admitted, spinning the ring on her finger. "Harry doesn't know," she added on after a moment, looking bashful.

Scoffing and rolling her eyes, Adena lifted a hand to cup Grace's cheek. "As much as I love Harry, screw him if he tries to get in the way of you and the one you love. I think, maybe, he'll come around. After all, we are all going to save the world together." Pushing her hand away with a smile, Grace disappeared back behind her curtain to wash the shampoo from her hair.

After they had finished cleaning up they stepped back out wrapped in their towels with their hair pulled into hair ties to keep out of the way. They each smelled clean and looked more refreshed than they had since arriving. It wasn't just that they had gotten physically cleaned up, but they had a chance to relieve some of the burden on their shoulders.

"Are you going to sleep with him?" Grace asked bluntly as Adena used a smaller towel to soak the water from her hair.

Pausing to consider, the tanned woman made a face in contemplation. "I _really _want to," she whined out, getting a laugh from Grace as she wrapped the older woman in a one armed embrace. "God, you should have seen me after our flight practice. I was in his plane; I don't remember that last time I got so turned on—and from a guy doing _barrel rolls_." Grace broke into another fit of giggles and rested her wet head against Adena's.

"We're in so deep," Grace mumbled as she and Adena looked into the mirror above the counter, their reflections staring back at them. "But somehow, I've never been happier. For the most part, at least." Adena laughed in return before she turned to press a motherly kiss against Grace's temple before looking back at their reflections.

"You know, I have a really fucked up tan-line."

Further giggling accompanied the comment.

**Since I kept everyone waiting so long for the chapter before this one, I made sure to have this edited as quickly as possible—even got it out on the same day! Hope you all enjoyed it, and the Sharp/Adena moments within **


	9. To the Sky of Glittering Gems

**To the Sky of Glittering Gems**

The final day of training before they headed out to Kennedy, Florida was a day of distraction, and it seemed to take the longest to pass by. However, at the end of their afternoon training Harry surprised them with the news that NASA was going to be giving them rides where they wanted to go only for the night, so they had to be back by morning to head to Kennedy for final launch preparations.

The guys weren't very discrete about discussing their plans, so Adena knew who would be going to the strip club, and it was a no brainer that A.J. and Grace would be taking off for some alone time on their last night on Earth. Standing at the front entrance of the building, Adena watched as they each drove away in the large black SUV's, the same she had gotten picked up in on that first day. She had wanted to be there to wish Chick luck, knowing that he had been thinking more and more of his family as the clock counted down.

But she had nowhere to go, no one to see. She had just watched her family drive away.

Sitting on the steps as the trucks disappeared into the horizon, she squinted against the orange-red of the sun, the fading warmth caressing her skin. Harry had remained behind as well, so she wouldn't be alone at the base. Maybe she'd take the night to read up more on the shuttle-

"Hey."

So lost in her thoughts, Adena's green eyes looked away from the distant sun to where Sharp was standing in front of her, dressed in casual clothes for the first time. Wearing his regular white shirt with a pair of well-worn jeans, she found herself smiling at the sight. "Will," she greeted, "So, you do own something other than that jumpsuit."

"Do you? Go get changed, we're going for a ride," he ordered, taking in her own bright blue suit. She hadn't thought to change since she hadn't been intending to leave the base, and now she was wearing a confused frown but he persisted until she had scurried back into the base to go and change into her own clothes.

When she came back wearing a pair of khaki coloured cargos and a black tank top—bearing the NASA logo on her breast—Sharp realized he shouldn't have been surprised. It suited her perfectly, from the time he had spent with her and could actually say he knew some of her personality. Her black sneakers and tied back hair were just an addition to her quirks. Her hands tucked into her pockets showed the definition on her shoulders and biceps and he could see a faint scar on her collarbone that appeared to be a surgical mark.

"So, where we going?" she asked as she jumped the steps to land next to Sharp, letting her hands slip back into her pockets as a natural reaction. "And how are we getting there?" she asked a moment later she was looked around to see that the drivers had left, even with some SUV's left in the lot.

"It's a surprise, and we're taking my truck," he evaded, nudging her toward the lot of cars and trucks as he jingled the keys she had not noticed in his hand. His truck was a sleek silver pick up that she could tell was well taken care of and had even recently gotten a wash. Sliding into the passenger seat, Adena marvelled at the new car smell even though she could tell that it was not a newer model. He _really_ took care of his truck.

"Oh, god, you're one of those guys," she finally said in mock anguish but was distracted at the boisterous laugh that Sharp let out. He kept himself so composed when they were around the others at the base, it was like someone had replaced him with a happier twin as soon as the others had dispersed.

The guards of the gate must have been expecting him because he just had to flash his ID and they were letting them through, driving down the long road that led them through the open fields of land that NASA utilized whenever they had to do testing. He kept the windows rolled down, letting the wind blow at their faces while it was still warm with summer heat, pushing and pulling at the dark strands of Adena's hair even though she had tied it back. They were both smiling against the refreshing breeze as Sharp manoeuvred them through the streets with a precision of someone who had made the drive several times before.

They had alternated between talking and fighting over radio stations for an hour before they reached a small town. Sharp sobered up quite a bit when they were riding through the town, the warm pink of sunset giving it a homey and well-kept feeling. When he pulled up alongside a playground that had a couple of parents sitting watching their kids and children playing on the equipment, she knew exactly where they were.

"Are you going to tell them?" she asked when he didn't leave the truck, instead just watched the two blonde girls that were playing by the monkey-bars.

"No," he mumbled out, watching his daughters with a longing in his eyes that broke Adena's heart.

"Go and see them," she encouraged. Snatching the keys from the ignition, relieved that he had already turned the truck off, the brunette motioned with her head toward the children. "You don't have to tell them, but you can give yourself a reason to come home." Sharp looked to her with those longing eyes and it made her smile sadly before reaching over to give his forearm a gentle squeeze. "You're not gunna get these keys back until you go-"

"Come with me," he interrupted, gripping the hand that was still on his arm. "Come meet them."

Glancing toward the bench nearest the monkey-bars, Adena spotted the woman with light blonde hair that was watching them and, with a wince, the man that was with her. "Will she mind?" she asked after a moment, knowing that Sharp was well aware who it was that she was talking about. She had been worried when speaking with Grace that he would go back to his ex-wife, but it seemed he didn't have the opportunity.

"She doesn't get a say in who I introduce the girls to, come on." Popping open the driver's door, Adena still ended up hesitating before she did the same with her door and hopped down, pocketing Sharp's keys since she was still holding them. He met her at the front of the truck before they made their way, together, to the children and their mother. Adena became aware that she was still wearing the black shirt with the NASA logo on it, but she didn't really have any way of covering it up now.

It was the two daughters that noticed them first, taking off at a dead run with a scream of 'daddy!' before Sharp was tackled to the ground with his laughter mingling with theirs. Adena found the sound contagious and laughed lowly to herself as she watched the usually rough man as he wrapped his daughters up in his arms and hugged them tightly. Their mother and her boyfriend—husband?—rose from the bench.

"Willie?" she asked in surprise, but he was too focused on the two girls who were sitting on his stomach and chest, making it impossible to get up.

"Need some back up down there, Colonel?" Adena couldn't help but to tease, highly amused by the scene as a grin was painted across her face.

The youngest, who she remembered Sharp mentioning to be Veronica, stood up from where she had been draped over her dad's chest and moved to stand in front of her. "Do you work with daddy?" she asked in a soft, young voice. Crouching down so that the girl wasn't staring at her thighs, Adena smiled at her as she looked into those eyes that matched Will's.

"Yes, I do," she answered calmly, "And I'm going to have to believe that you are Veronica?" The little girl gave an excited wiggle and nod of her head, happy to be recognized. "And I also hear that you don't like salad croutons…" she trailed off, before laughing when the small blonde made a disgusted, dramatic 'bleh' sound and shook her head until her soft blonde hair flew around her face. "Yea, me neither."

"Will, what are you doing here? Who is this?" the woman asked when she had finally reached them, taking their oldest daughter from off of her father's stomach. However, as soon as Will was on his feet she had run right back to him, letting him pick the eight year old up and hitch her on his hip while facing him.

"Charlotte, this is Adena; we're going to be on my next assignment together. We haven't gotten out for a while so I wanted to bring her to meet the girls."

"Are you and daddy gunna fly?" Veronica asked excitedly as she bounced in front of Adena, tugging happily on her shirt.

"Yea," Adena answered as her throat seemed to constrict on her. "Your daddy's going to fly me and my friends somewhere so we can fix something," she answered as calmly as she could.

"The space people!" the older daughter shouted, who Adena had heard Charlotte call Rachel, as she pointed at the NASA logo over Adena's right breast. "Are you going to the moon, daddy?" she asked as she looked to her father, Veronica reaching toward Adena to gently trace the letters stitched into her shirt.

Will laughed as he adjusted his hold on his older daughter. "No, sorry baby, not the moon. Not this time," he answered, watching as Adena smiled and began to trace 'NASA' over Veronica's collarbone to match where it was on her. "I just wanted to come and see you before I left."

"What's your name?" Veronica asked the brunette, clearly not having been paying attention when her father had mentioned her name. The innocence almost made her want to cry but she kept her smile in place.

"Adena King," she introduced before making a show of holding out her hand to the small child. "And you?"

"Veronica Sharp," the blonde said dramatically as she shook Adena's larger hand, her antics even getting a smile from Charlotte. Tugging on her hand, Adena leaned closer as the girl wanted her to do, until she was whispering in her ear rather loudly. "You'll keep my daddy safe, right?" she asked, pulling back with large, hopeful blue eyes.

"I promise," Adena assured, holding up her hand with her pinky extended. Veronica smiled and reached up to wrap her tiny pinky around Adena's rough finger, both leaning forward to kiss their thumbs to seal the promise completely.

Saying their goodbyes, Will doing so very reluctantly, they were soon heading back to the truck with heavy hearts. Once they were back on the road, Adena nearly forgetting that she had the keys, she reached over to take one of his hands from the wheel to hold in hers to offer her assurances of what was to come. "What did she whisper to you?" he asked after a moment, knowing that a promise was made but not what the little girl had asked.

"She wanted me to keep her daddy safe," she answered in a soft voice, barely heard over the wind blowing in through the windows.

Will squeezed her hand tightly in his, but didn't speak again. They were silent until he pulled over for the second time, but this was further outside of the town, back in the direction of NASA, in the middle of nowhere. They had pulled out of the treeline on a dirt road and were now left in front of a large field that she assumed was usually used for growing wheat, with the sun casting a golden glow over the yellow plants.

Instead of just remaining as they were, however, Will made a three point turn until the back of his truck was facing the sunset and he was pulling the keys out of the ignition for the second time. "Come on, you'll love the view." Doing as he said, she jumped from the truck and moved to the back where he was folding back the covering and popping the back open. Helping her up, even though she knew she wouldn't have needed it, Adena smiled as she stood tall and looked over the field that was starting to transition to a soft pink colour.

"Wow," Adena mumbled as she nodded her head, "Well, I do love the view," she admitted, moving aside to let Will jump up onto the back as well. The sky was reflecting off of the plants and trees, turning the land a soft pink and orange.

"Knew you would," he said with a faint grin, sitting on the side. "You stare at the sky often enough," he added in a teasing voice.

Adena sat on the end of the back hatch, her legs dangling down as she leaned her elbows down on her knees, smiling serenely. After she had met Will's children she had thought she might feel off, like she would be put off because she was interested in a man that had two daughters, but instead she felt the need to prove that she could be a mother. After his words on her doubts there was an urge to prove to him that he was correct in his assurances.

"I've seen sunsets all over the world, from so many different viewpoints, but it's always so beautiful," she admired, her eyes scanning over every pink hue and beam of light that seemed to shine just a bit brighter than the rest.

Will sat himself behind her, holding her to his chest with his arms crossed across her torso. Leaning backward to let him support her weight, they watched together as the sky bloomed with colourful brilliance, shining the world in shades of reds, oranges, yellows and pinks. It was soft and precious, a picture that Adena wished she could keep in her mind and her heart forever.

Turning her head to look back at Will, her smile was peaceful—but there was a sad quality to it. Adena couldn't help but to feel as though this was her goodbye to the world, to see this one last beautiful sunset.

"Just stop thinking," Will whispered against her hair, kissing the soft strands as the faintest scent of metal came from them. Pressing his lips in a trail from her hair down to her jaw, Adena was finally relaxing against him as she thought solely on the feel of his lips on her cheek and jaw, of his arms cradling her tight, the strong scent of his cologne teasing her senses.

Tipping her head back, Will finally pressed his lips over hers with such gentleness that it was more of a haunting touch, a ghostly caress. Turning herself further into him, Adena pressed back into the kiss as her hand lifted to cradle his cheek, feeling the faintest trace of stubble against her palm.

Soon pulling her up onto his lap, Will Sharp held onto this woman so tightly, digging his fingers into her hair until it fell free from its tie while his free arm pulled her forward to mould them together. Only pulling away once to look at her face; Adena's eyes were closed and there was a look of ease that had taken over her saddened features. When her green eyes opened to look at him he was relieved to see that she no longer lingered on thoughts of goodbyes or tragic endings.

As one of their possible last nights on Earth, he refused to let her think on what could be lost. Just for tonight.

Tugging with the hand still burrowed in her hair, he kissed her again. Stealing the air from her lungs and conscious thought from her mind.

Laying her back on the bed of the truck, the brunette watched with curious eyes as Will bent to press his lips along her stomach where her shirt had ridden up slightly. As he moved up along her abdomen, following the smooth expanse of skin and muscle, he lifted the dark material of her shirt away to reveal more and more. Her torso was a light, milky white in comparison to her arms, her tank tops protecting her flesh from the sun. Adena smiled when he hit a ticklish spot near her ribs, lifting a hand to run long fingers through his hair.

Blue eyes flicked up to look at her before Will pushed her shirt up further, revealing the dark lacy bra she had chosen when she changed. Continuing his path, Will trailed kisses between her breasts while his hands pushed her shirt up until Adena was able to pull it off completely for him. Turning to rest his head over her left breast, Will listened. Her heart was a steady rhythm beneath his cheek, pounding a pace that he knew was slightly faster than normal. It was a beautiful sound, a symphony of her life.

Warm fingers carding through his hair drew him to look up once more, lifting his head from her soft flesh to meet her murky green eyes. The sunset warmed her skin but it was her smile that brightened her features. When she tugged gently on his hair, he let Adena guide him up until she drew him into a kiss.

Desperate to even the odds between them, Adena's hands drifted beneath Will's shirt to trace along the muscles that she knew had been there. Her hands were calloused and strong, but warm and welcoming as Will let her relieve him of his shirt until he could press own on her torso to meet bare skin. She sighed at the contact, tracing her hands along his back as his lips fell to her jaw, tracing the bone.

When he moved down to press tender kisses along the column of her neck, Adena looked up. The sky was darkening quickly, taking the colours with it as they gave way to deep blues and rich violets. Among the new colours, however, were stars. Smiling widely before she closed her eyes, the rig worker let her mind forget the danger and took that moment only to feel, to remember the beauty of stars and sunsets, the moon that circled the Earth like an ever faithful companion.

"What's with the smile?" Will asked quietly, bringing her to open her eyes as she looked to him. There were tears there, but they were not sad or grievous. They were almost happy.

Looking up at the stars, he followed her line of site to take in the glittering gems that had appeared over the treeline. Caressing the backs of her knuckles against Will's cheek, Adena brought his focus back to her.

"Take me to those stars, Flyboy."

As the day gave way to night, as the world became aware of the Asteroid hurtling toward Earth, they kept their peace. Between the subtle touches and the calm, whispered words, neither of the occupants in the truck bed allowed their burdens to return. Even as the moon drew across the sky, lighting the field in a silvery glow, and the entire stretch of deep blue was littered with a brilliant blanket of stars, they lay in ease.

Their rapture echoed through the trees and open field, chasing away the stress and burdens of the world that had threatened to drag them down, to ruin them.

And there was the calm.

Wrapped in an embrace of strength and reassurance, limbs tangled and hearts content, Adena could only smile. Tracing her nails along Will's chest as his fingers combed through her hair, all she could so was smile. And it was true. There was no falsehood behind her happiness, no need to force a façade of calm or a mask of indifference.

Leaning her cheek to Will's pectoral muscle, she let herself become lost in the strong and reassuring beat of his heart. It had calmed, slowed, and was now a steady rhythm to match with hers. Shifting to wrap her arm around him, she pulled herself as close to Will as she could manage. His arms tightened around her in response, a kiss falling against her hair.

There were no whispered sentiments, or declarations of love. The feelings were there, flowing through their veins as true as their blood, but they did not need to speak the words to show them. In every kiss, she knew his heart. In ever caress, she returned it. And in ever whispered comfort, they shared it.

**I wrote this chapter **_**three**_** different ways before I finally decided that I liked enough to publish it. I hope that all the changing and altering was worth it, I greatly enjoyed this final draft. Listening to the Soundtrack for the movie and be very inspirational. **


	10. Godspeed

**Godspeed**

As the sun was setting over the horizon in the distance, the crew of the world's best pilots and a ragtag team of oil drillers made their way across the tarmac outside of the NASA base, where they had just spent their last day of preparations. Two sleek black Lear Jets were sitting on the runway, each waiting for a team to board. The mood was solemn, trying to make sure they were prepared for the day on top of the devastating news they had heard about Shanghai the night before while they had been out celebrating their last night on Earth. Fifty-thousand people were dead because of one piece of rock from a meteor belt, and there was sure to be more. It was a gripping, terrifying reality.

That day, going through the simulation in the tank for the last time, they had refused to make a single mistake and made it through flawlessly. Even A.J.'s team—which received them all a nod of gratitude and acceptance from the technicians of NASA, who had doubted them so much.

Standing on that tarmac, looking out at the sunset and knowing that come the next evening they were going to be launched into space, the group stood as a whole one final time. Each had something different on their minds, from family and friends to the one hope that they live to see another sunset on Earth.

Lifting her hand to cover her mouth with the backs of her fingers, Adena was hiding a smile. She was thinking on the previous sunset, lying in the back of Will Sharp's truck as they watched the light fade out in introduction to the brilliant moon and accompanying stars. She closed her eyes and bowed her head, choosing that moment to base her belief on; she would have that moment again, lying at sunset with the man she knew she was coming to hold close to her heart.

"Dee," Grace began hesitantly, seeing the woman deep in thought as she considered the sunset. She was going to be riding in the jet with A.J. and wanted to have a moment to speak with Harry and Adena separately. Those brilliant green eyes looked to her and caught the light, seeming to shine in the oranges and pinks.

"Gracie," she greeted in return, facing the shorter woman and bringing her into a crushing hug without further ceremony. Grace returned the embrace with desperate vigor, clasping onto Adena's NASA jumpsuit as she gasped back on her tears. She didn't want to say goodbye, not to her sister, or father or fiancé. She didn't want to have to tell them goodbye, or even a possible 'I'll see you soon' because that would still mean that they had to leave her and she did not want that. "Don't cry," Adena tried to sooth, running her hand along her sister figure's soft locks.

"Sorry," Grace mumble pathetically before she composed herself and pulled back, the two women leaning forehead to forehead as they smiled. "Bring them back to me, okay? Bring _yourself_ back to me," she begged, gripping Adena's thick hair for a moment before she pulled back. The tanned woman caught Grace before she could leave to press a kiss to her forehead, just as a mother would, then turned to head for her jet as Grace sought out her father.

They would see each other again before the take-off, but this would be their goodbye.

Landing in Florida late that evening, long after the sun had set in order to keep their presence as quiet as possible, the crew were soon whisked away to another NASA base for their final debriefing and their final night on Earth, shackled to their responsibilities. There was no partying, or drinking, or requests to leave the base. They all went to their rooms silently and did their best to fall asleep on that final night, even as the nausea of nerves kept them awake long into the dark and early morning hours.

When Adena woke the next day she found a box sitting outside of her door, her name scrawled across it in Grace's familiar handwriting. Opening the box as she leaned against the doorframe, a smile touched her lips at the familiar sight of a photo album; on the lid, still in Grace's neat script, was a simple note—_to remember what you're saving_. Dropping the box on her bed, Adena tucked the slightly heavy book into her bag that she was cleared to bring on the shuttle. They had to request permission to bring certain things up with them, but because they were going to be flying for two and a half days from the Russian Space Station to the moon, they were allowed to bring something to entertain themselves.

Leaving her room with her bag over her shoulder, Adena tried to walk tall through the base, catching the attention of the men and women who worked there as she made her way through the winding halls they had taken the night before. On her way, one by one, her crew fell in step alongside her until they were marching as a family to the preparation rooms—they couldn't afford to delay any longer. Along the way, Grace and Harry fell in step next to Adena from where they were re-entering from the front entrance of the building.

Arriving at their destination, Harry stepped through first while Grace pulled Adena and A.J. to a stop for just a moment. "I told him," she said as she looked from A.J. to Adena, smiling softly. "I told him we're getting married, so he can go up there knowing the full truth."

Smiling her encouragement, Adena stepped up and gave her a quick, tight hug before she pulled back and patted A.J. on the shoulder, offering her support before she turned to give them a moment alone, entering the preparation room. It was a white, cylindrical room with chairs that sat in a circle in the very center, facing inward at each other. Taking the seat next to Harry, she reached over to take his hand and do what she could to offer her support.

As soon as A.J. stepped inside, the door was closed behind him and they were sealed within, taking that moment to themselves to just sit and think on what was going to happen.

Sitting in their simple white and grey shirts and pants, they crew looked from the floor to the other men and women that were sitting with them. Adena and Watts locked eyes for a moment before bowing their heads in silence. They had once agreed to keep the men in line while training, now they were agreeing to keep the men safe as they prepared to save the world.

NASA technicians stepped up to each crew member with their brightly coloured flight suits, the crew with a brilliant orange and the pilots with a vibrant blue. Their names were presented on each of them, below the insignia of the US air forces, sewn onto each suit along with the national flag and the NASA logo that they had been wearing for the past two weeks.

Pulling on her suit and letting one of the technicians zip it up at the back, Adena pulled the material away from her chest to look down at the tag over her heart, her name in white stitching looking back at her. She had caused some trouble with the suits because of her size, needing hers to be so much smaller than the other men's. Bear and Max had caused the same trouble, but worse since they needed larger suits than normal.

Sitting back down in her seat next to the man that had become her father, she looked across to the two pilots of the _Freedom_ shuttle, her pilots, and locked eyes with Will. The blue of his pilot's flight suit made his eyes stand out brilliantly in the stark white room. They were then each given a helmet, set at their feet as they remained sitting in their unbroken circle.

A door unlocked behind Will and a man in a while uniform stepped through, waving them forward. "Astronauts," he called through the room, breaking the silence as they all got to their feet and stepped out of that circle to begin filing from the room. Will took the lead as they began their march through the base that would take them to their final hanger, buses waiting outside to drive them to the launch site. They knew that this was one of the last moments of peace they would get before sitting in the shuttles, as the world was now well aware of their existence and what was to come.

The hanger they entered had men and woman of NASA lining the walls in white suits, checking that each member of each crew had all that they needed for their flight up. Adena made sure to ask where they had taken her bag upon entering their preparation room, assured that it would be getting on the shuttle _Freedom_ at that very moment.

Will caught her as she was crossing the room to stand before the hanger doors, as they had been instructed. "I'm starting to wish you weren't coming up with us," he admitted in a low voice, ducking his head so that he didn't have to speak too loudly for her to hear. "I want to believe that you'll be down here, safe, and waiting for when we return."

Even though she was sure he was trying to remain inconspicuous for a reason, Adena pulled him into a hug that was made slightly awkward from their flight suits. "Someone's gotta keep those idiots in line up there," she teased, before pressing the lightest of kisses against his ear. "I will be safe, and we'll return here together. I promise."

"I'm going to hold you to that," he mumbled, his arms holding her to him for a moment more before they broke apart. Adena's attention was drawn away to where A.J. suddenly began singing loudly, and rather atrociously. Will, however, looking up to where Harry was standing with Chick at the main door, their eyes locking over Adena's shoulder.

"'_I'm leaving, on a jet plane, don't know when I'll be back again'_," A.J. was singing as he lifted Grace up and began to slowly spin in circles in some form of one-sided dance. Adena snorted as she tried not to laugh at the spectacle, especially when she saw the looks he was getting from the NASA specialists around the room.

Stepping up to her family, Bear pulled her in to his side with the hand that wasn't holding his helmet. "_'Leavin' on a jet plane'_," he continued for A.J., the deep thrum of his voice seeming to vibrate his body against Adena's side. "_'I don't know when I'll be back again'_." On the next chorus Rockhound and Max joined in as well, getting a happy laugh from Grace that A.J. had been able to start something like that.

"Cute," Adena mumbled, shaking her head in exasperation as she pulled from Bear's hold with one strong pat on his back, just as the technicians came to break them up and aim them back toward the doors where they were meant to be standing. Adena caught the amusement in Will's eyes, even though he was trying to look strict, and followed him across the room to stand next to him in their lineup. The singing continued until they were all stood in their line of orange and blue, before the upbeat mood began to dissipate in favour of the intense, grim faces that they had seen everyone else wearing up until that moment.

For one brief instant, the lights went out and they were left in total darkness. In the next, the door began to ascend and the floor at their feet was streaked with light once more. Adena fought the urge to glance to the side when Will took her hand for a second, clutching it a knuckle-white hold before releasing it. They met the flashes and calls of reporters and photographers with their best game faces. Military personnel were keeping them all at bay, standing in a line with the assistance of manned helicopters keeping a watchful eye for any sort of disturbance that meant danger for the astronauts.

"_I address you tonight, not as the President of the United States, not as the leader of a country, but as a citizen of humanity."_

It felt strange, to stand still as the cameras flashes and voices called and cheered. It felt like she should be running, as fast as she could. It felt like they were wasting precious moments when she knew that in fact every moment was being utilized to the fullest, that everything was timed down to the second. They knew they were on a clock and they were following each moment as they had been instructed. With her hand still warm from Will's touch, Adena grasped her helmet in both hands to try and stop the trembles that were rocking through them, visible to the eye.

"_We are faced with the very gravest of challenges. The Bible calls this day Armageddon, the end of all things."_

Stepping out of their neat line, Harry began to lead the crew down the short isle between the massing crowds and armed soldiers. The military officials that were lining either side stood straight and saluted them as they were passing. Adena felt her heart stutter when the people that were standing all around, waiting to see them behind their news cameras and microphones, rose in a cheer that seemed to shake the very ground beneath their feet.

Staring out at the crowds in amazement, she couldn't even muster a smile or a wave to them in acknowledgement.

"_And yet, for the first time in the history of the planet, a species has the technology to prevent its own extinction."_

Grace watched from the sidelines, standing with the clusters of NASA specialists in their white uniforms, twisting her engagement ring around her finger as she watched her family walk away from her. Even as she waved her farewell to A.J. before he disappeared onto the metal shuttle bus, she couldn't bring herself to smile.

"_All of you praying with us need to know that everything that can be done to prevent this disaster is being called into service."_

Sitting in the bus and watching out the window as they pulled away from the base, escorted by police and military alike, Adena saw people cheering and the flashes of cameras accompanied by the men that stood in uniform and saluted them as they departed. Placing her hand on the window of the bus, she watched as a father lifted his son onto his shoulders to look over to crowds, to see the buses that were carrying the astronauts who were meant to save the world.

"_The Human thirst for excellence, knowledge, every step up the ladder of science, every adventurous reach into space, all of our combined modern technologies and imaginations—even the wars that we've fought—have provided us the tools to wage this terrible battle."_

All across the country, the world, people were watching their televisions and listening to radios as the president addressed the world, and as the men and women trained to save the world stepped from their shuttle buses onto the open tarmac that held the impossibly large X-71's. Standing against the sunlight, the towers of metal looked even more imposing than they had when the crew saw one for the first time in the NASA hanger.

Families huddled together, watching and waiting for the coming launch of the two shuttles that were carrying mankind's only hope.

"Honey," a man called from where he was sitting on the couch with two little girls on either side of him, sitting up straighter as he watched the orange and blue suits pile from the buses on the television. "You're gunna want to come here."

"_Through all the chaos that is our history, through all of the wrongs and the discord, through all of the pain and suffering, through all of our times, there is one thing that has nourished our souls and elevated our species above its origin, and that is our courage."_

Charlotte stepped from the kitchen with a mug in one hand and a drying cloth in the other, after having been listening to the man speak on the television from the other room. Spotting the bright orange suits, she stepped closer to get a better look before dropping the mug from her hand with a gasp when a man in a blue suit became visible past the others.

"Daddy!" the two girls shouted as the pointed excitedly at the television.

Amongst the suits of blue and orange, they all recognized Will's determined face as he glared against the sun that shone in his eyes. As the reporter was speaking the angle changed, revealing who had been walking in front of him. Adena, looking tense but set, walked next to the men of her rig crew with the bright orange of her suit glowing in the sunlight. She seemed drastically different than when they had seen her, more serious and far less playful than when they had seen her in the park.

"_Dreams of an entire planet are focused tonight on those fifteen brave souls travelling into the Heavens. And may we all, citizens the world over, see these events through."_

Adena turned her head to look back at Will, seeing that he had done the same. Her hair was pulled back into a French braid, the length of it swinging around and catching the sun to make it shine a faint copper in the dark brown. With the reassurance that he was there behind her, Adena faced forward once more and continued to walk amongst her family with a straight back and a sure stride.

"_Godspeed and good luck to you."_

**I wasn't expecting this story to be so popular when I first published it, and everyone and especially thank you to **_**Lyth Icebreath**_** for her awesome review, it made me smile to get a review like that first thing when I open my computer.**

**I've been writing more chapters, so I just need to edit them and I can post them over the next couple of days! Hope to get more reviews, always love hearing from you **


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